


Reckoning

by buttsonthebeach



Series: Hamilton x Dragon Age [8]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character-Driven Plot, Depression, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Featuring the fictional racial politics of Thedas, In chapters seven and ten so far, Multiple Pov, Post-Canon, Post-Trespasser, chapters dealing with that are also clearly tagged, if I have succeeded, in theory, it is clearly marked and easily skipped
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-09
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-02-12 15:23:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 172,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12962346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttsonthebeach/pseuds/buttsonthebeach
Summary: The year is 9:68 Dragon. Solas returned to Ellana Lavellan and together they founded a new elven republic in the Arbor Wilds called Enasan. It’s where they raised their only daughter, a mage named Ashara, and where they enjoyed a peaceful life until the lingering energy of the Anchor made Ellana deathly ill. Now, after many trials, Ellana is healed, and Ashara is grown - but there have always been enemies waiting for their moment to strike, and as more and more people question exactly how Ellana was healed, and as Empress Celene's health weakens, there will be a price for all those years of peace.This is a direct sequel to "Awakened." There's a summary at the beginning of chapter one for those who have not read the other works in the series.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome! This is the latest story in my series, a direct sequel to [Awakened](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10080125/chapters/22465256). I hope the summary below and references throughout provide enough context for new readers, but feel free to ask any questions here or on Tumblr if they don’t. If you are a returning reader - thank you and welcome back! Let’s see what Ashara has been up to... We'll check in with Solas and Ellana soon.
> 
> Warning: this chapter depicts blood and violence. It is not enough to warrant a graphic rating, but I don’t want anyone caught off guard. It is at the very end of the chapter. There is also blood magic, in case anyone is put off by that.
> 
> This summary contains spoilers for [Body of Knowledge](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8686498/chapters/19913758) and Awakened:
> 
> The year is 9:68 Dragon. Solas returned to Ellana Lavellan after two years of war and together they founded a new elven homeland in the Arbor Wilds called Enasan. It’s where they raised their only daughter, a mage named Ashara, and where they enjoyed a peaceful life until the lingering energy of the Anchor made Ellana deathly ill. 
> 
> Nineteen-year-old Ashara refused to accept her mother’s fate and traveled to Tevinter in search of a cure alongside her human friends Lucius and Claudia. Ashara found a cure to the magic killing her mother - but only after being deceived and possessed by a spirit who turned out to be Falon’Din, who sought vengeance on her father for creating the Veil and for using his orb to slowly weaken said Veil in Enasan in hopes of restoring elven immortality. Ashara was horrified to discover that her parents had broken the very treaty that formed their homeland, and traumatized by her experience with Falon’Din, but ultimately grateful that she was able to save her mother’s life. Since then she and Lucius have pursued and ended a romantic relationship, and she has worked for an organization that helps elves immigrate to Enasan from Tevinter - which is where our story begins.

The morning they were to leave for Enasan, Livia Agosti counted and recounted the changes of clothes and rough-hewn toys she’d packed for Sylvio, the money she’d set aside, the Elvhen words she’d hoarded for months, and the spires of the Minrathous skyline. She counted the warped boards on the floor of their tiny flat. She counted the windows of the building across the street. She counted the steps to her best friend’s flat one floor down. She counted the scars on Camila’s scalded hands and face when she opened the door.

“This is really it,” Camila said. “You’re going at last.”

“Yes,” Livia said, squeezing her hands tight. They were going all the way to the other end of Thedas, to Enasan, the new elven homeland, the country won by the blood of elves all over the continent twenty-four years before, when she was an infant in her mother’s arms and her mother was a newly freed slave.

“Someday we’ll come too,” Camila said. “Save a place for us. Find all the best spira shops.”

Livia did her best to smile. She hadn’t even thought about that. When would she taste the sweet honeyed pastries again? “I don’t even know if they have spira in Enasan.”

“Then start the first shop. I’ll come and make it worth your while. I will.”

Camila’s youngest was coughing inside. A bad cough. Her clothes were more threadbare even than Livia’s own. It had taken Livia and her husband Vito a year of scrimping to save enough for the small fee charged by Vir'anor, the organization that helped elves immigrate to Enasan. And Camila, whose drunken husband had disappeared six months before…

Livia bit her lip, and then she threw her arms around her friend for a brief, tight hug. There was no good way to say good-bye, so they didn’t say it. She hadn’t said good-bye to her mother, either. She disapproved of this notion of leaving.

“We are as much a part of the Imperium as anyone,” she said stiffly. “We win our freedom and then we leave? No. I want the place I am owed here, in the country where my family has lived for generations. The place we were always owed. Not a place in some far off country ruled by a lunatic rebel god.”

Livia didn’t bother reminding her mother that Enasan was not ruled by Fen’Harel, however large his hand was in the founding of the country. She’d told her time and time again that there was a council, that according to the representatives of Vir'anor she met Fen’Harel wasn’t even on that council, but instead acted as an advisor when necessary. She just kissed her mother on the cheek and said she would miss her. Her older brother shook his head and said _soon, sister. I’ll convince her. We’ll join you. All of us._

She counted her family members then. Mother, brother, younger sister, nieces, nephews, her uncles. She was the first to leave. She’d been the first among them born into freedom, too, shortly after the war and the promises of the magisters that there would be no more slavery if the elves only fought for them instead of for Fen’Harel. When she first decided she would immigrate to Enasan five years ago, she decided it made sense. She was the first born to the promise of freedom, and she would be the first to make good on that promise. She would wheedle her way into a position at a fine household, make nice with the cold and distant mistress until she was one of their most trusted maids and her meager wages were increased. She would work her fingers to the bone and save up enough money not just for the fee but for classes that would teach her to read and write, so she could be of use once she got to Enasan. So she could sometimes pilfer a book from her master’s library and slowly, slowly read about this world she would move through. And someday, she would see what life was like in a place where an elf could live where they pleased, pursue whatever education they wanted, and have no fear of the depravities of humans.

Sylvio and Vito were awake when she returned home from Camila’s flat, playing a rhyming and hand-clapping game Vito had taught the boy recently. Her heart swelled as it always did when she saw them. Sylvio had been a setback in all of this, yes. A year into her plan and she’d studied and saved enough to feel comfortable seeking out representatives of Vir'anor, and then she’d woken up sick as a dog a month after a quick tryst with the cook’s new elven assistant - who’d mysteriously disappeared after he found out, of course. And then she didn’t even have enough money to go and see the one wisewoman who could take care of it safely, and she’d heard stories of the women who went elsewhere, so she’d had the damn child and given up the dream of seeing the glory of Arlathan restored before her.

But she’d fallen in love with little Sylvio at some point between his first laugh and his first steps, and with Vito not long after. He was a good, steady sort. Not one for extravagant dreams, like moving to Enasan. But she mentioned it often enough that eventually he sighed and said _if it will make you happy, amata, we can try_. Sylvio was four now, and that became their driving reason to leave as soon as they could. If they moved now, he might not even remember this country where there was no real slavery but also no real hope for someone with pointed ears.

Livia hadn’t been home long when the knock sounded. It was Tamaris, their guide, beaming as he had been every time they met in the past: at the meeting he held months ago, to search for people interested in Vir'anor, when he came by their little flat a few days later at their request, a couple of months after that, when he confirmed that they would come with his party the next time they arrived in Minrathous - and, of course, only a few short days before, when he’d come by for that final confirmation, and to collect their fee. He was young - only eighteen if she remembered right - and had the optimism for such smiles. He’d also been born and raised in Enasan. He felt no need to duck his head respectfully when passing humans on the streets. His head was always held high. She hoped Sylvio was like that, one day.

“On dhea,” he said. _Good morning._ She had to picture her cramped notes on the vellum she’d pilfered from her master years ago to translate the words. It was one of the finest things she owned. She’d covered it with dates, facts, questions, and every Elvhen word she could find.

“On dhea,” she said, flushing at once at her own mispronunciation. She turned to her husband and son. “Are we ready?”

She didn’t know the answer herself.

Years and years of preparation, and now all she could do was count as they walked to their meeting place. The places they passed where she’d been called rabbit and worse while running errands for her master (employer, employer, there were no masters now) - the place where she’d had her first kiss - where Sylvio said his first word - where her littlest sister had been nearly dragged into an alley by drunken men looking for “a good time” -

Where her life and the lives of all her family had unfolded since time beyond counting.

They stopped in a small, out of the way courtyard in the lowest part of the city, where they were met by another elf. She was dressed like Tamaris was in fine traveling gear colored green and brown and designed to look like interlocking leaves, though hers was metal and not leather. Tamaris was a scout, and a good one for his age, or so he claimed. This elf had two wicked, curved blades on her back, and was leaning against one of the buildings that formed the courtyard, watching the road.

“Agosti family, this is Gwynne. She’s one of our warriors,” Tamaris said. Gwynne bowed at the waist and gave them a small smile, but said nothing else. “We’ll just need to wait here for the other two members of our party before we set off, as well as the other two families who will make the journey with us. Then we’ll be on our way.”

They were near the southern gate. Soon Livia would be out of the city for only the second time in her life. For the next two months she would travel through places so foreign they may as well have been one of the moons - southern Tevinter, and Nevarra, and then across the sea to Orlais - and then, deep in the south in what was once known as the Arbor Wilds - Enasan. It would be fall when they arrived. Had she packed warm enough clothes for Sylvio? It was so cold in the south...

“It’s going to be fine, you know.”

Livia turned to Tamaris.

“If you say so,” Livia said finally.

“Well, that may be giving my words a lot of power.”

Livia looked down at Sylvio then and saw that he’d picked up on her anxiety. He was sensitive that way. Her sweet, sensitive son. He’d refused to speak to Tamaris or Gwynne, and now he was clinging to Vito’s leg, watching the strangers warily.

“You heard him, little one,” she said. “It’s going to be fine. You don’t have to hide behind your father. Aren’t you excited to leave for our new home?”

Sylvio shook his head. “I don’t want to go. It’s far.”

“You know, I’d bet Gwynne knows how you feel,” Tamaris said. “Vir'anor helped her family back when it was new and she was young. Isn’t that right, Gwynnie?”

The brown-haired elf turned from her careful watch of the road. She didn’t look pleased, though Livia couldn’t be sure if it was because of something she had seen or because of Tamaris’s affectionate nickname. Gwynne’s pale face softened, though, when she saw Sylvio clinging to his father’s leg.

“I will never forget the day we left Denerim,” Gwynne said as she approached them and knelt down. Her accent was a contrast to Tamaris’s gentle lilt. Rougher, with wider, rounder vowels. Livia wondered if that was typical of Fereldans.  “I had never been outside the city walls. Not in eleven years.”

Sylvio’ eyes went wide. “Eleven?”

“Yes,” Gwynne said with a solemn nod. “Eleven whole years. And do you know how frightened I was when I realized how big the world outside Denerim was?”

She went on to describe how the road towards the Frostback Mountains seemed to go on forever, and how she didn’t understand how anyone knew where they were going in a forest, and how she couldn’t believe that soon she would live in a place where she would hardly see a single human, where she would go to a good school…

Livia steeled herself and squeezed Vito’s hand. This was why they were leaving. Because of the way Sylvio listened in rapture to Gwynne’s stories of the new friends she made in Enasan, the festivals and the food, until the arrival of another elf interrupted them.

“Ah - on dhea, hahren,” Tamaris said in acknowledgement. “Everyone, this is Velriel, our fearless leader.”

For an instant, Tamaris’s naturally bright smile dimmed. He spoke a few rapid words in Elvhen, sounding concerned. Velriel responded with a curt shake of his head, then turned to them and inclined his head. The increasing light threw his impressive tattoos into relief. Half of his pale, careworn face was completely covered in the midnight blue of one of the old Elvhen gods - Livia had to go through her mental image of the vellum before she could call the name to mind. Elgar’nan. All-father, one of the most important Elvhen gods -

But what did that mean in Enasan, a country founded in part by a man who proved that they were never really gods?

“Andaran atishan,” Velriel said. “I apologize that we are late in getting underway. Where is Ashara?” This last part was addressed to Gwynne and Tamaris.

“Not sure,” Tamaris said. “Maybe she’s found herself a new human she fancies.”

Gwynne rolled her eyes. “She’s going to freeze your hand to your bow again if you keep teasing her.”

They debated sending Tamaris to search for this Ashara, but before they could decide where to look, another elf appeared around the corner - tall, with light brown skin and dark curly hair, and a staff on her back. She had an intense expression on her face - too many emotions to sort at a quick glance.

“Ah, there she is,” Tamaris said as she approached. “This is Ashara, our mage.” Then, addressing her directly. “Good of you to join us, da’fen. Did some new handsome stranger catch your eye at last?”

Ashara shot Tamaris a look that might have made a less cheery, self-satisfied person pale. Her wide blue eyes narrowed impressively when she was angry.

“No,” she said. But when she turned her face towards them, it was with a smile that did not quite reach those eyes. “I am pleased to meet you. The Agostis, correct? I do apologize for my lateness.” She paused, frowned, and turned to Velriel. “But - I’m not late, am I? Weren’t there two other families?”

Now Velriel looked annoyed. He spoke Elvhen once more, and Ashara looked chagrined, and gave a short reply. What were they saying? Livia caught _abelas_ in Ashara’s reply - sorrow. But that didn’t mean much with no context. No word in Elvhen did.

Would Sylvio even remember Tevene when he was older? Did that matter?

“What do you think the problem is?” Vito asked when the four of them circled up and spoke too quietly for them to hear.

“The other two families. They aren’t coming.” Did that mean they wouldn’t have enough money to make the journey? Would they stay in Minrathous and try and find others to come with them? Would they leave them here and return to Enasan alone?

Sylvio was the one who took his mother’s hand, but Livia held it tight.

“Well,” Tamaris said when their huddle ended. “Let’s not waste any more daylight. The open road awaits.”

That was it?

It probably wasn’t their place to question what the conversation had been about. Livia looked to Vito to make sure he was thinking the same. He nodded.

“Yes,” Livia said. “Let’s begin.”

They gathered their things, procured a cart and horse from one of the vendors nearest the city gates - and then they were out in the wide world, heading down the road towards the future Livia and her family were promised.

*

Ashara Lavellan considered herself fairly good at focusing.

It was an essential skill in a mage, after all. Willpower was what sustained your spells and kept you safe in the Fade, but it was useless if it wasn’t focused. It was something she’d never found natural. How could you focus on one thing when the world - the Fade - a single leaf - could contain so many hundreds of things worth noticing? Perhaps that was why her father had begun her training early and often, gently turning her every wondering remark to the steady click of the beads on the bracelet he’d made to help her meditate. _Focus, da’vhenan_.

It was a skill she leaned on often, and not just when dreaming or casting a spell. It was a skill she was trying to use as she navigated the countryside outside of Minrathous, and tried not to think of the two people she’d left behind in the city: Claudia and Lucius. Her two dearest friends.

Everyone else was worried about the other two families, the ones who were supposed to come with them on this trip. Like she should have been, if she could just make herself _focus_.

“And they’re certain?” Gwynne said to Velriel again. They were riding in the wagon, Ashara walking alongside them. The Agostis were in the back.

“Yes,” Velriel replied. “They say they received definitive word from their cousins who came with Michel’s group that they were harassed by bandits throughout the entirety of Orlais. There was some trouble with the border crossing, too.”

“Shit.”

Ashara glanced instinctively at the Agostis, but Vito and Sylvio were sleeping and Livia was looking around with the same nervousness she’d seen on a hundred immigrants’ faces before. None of them spoke Elvhen, she reminded herself. They didn’t know what Velriel and Gwynne were saying. Tamaris, of course, was a little ways ahead of the wagon, whistling merrily, and finding herbs on the side of the road.

“Don’t worry yourself too much, child,” Velriel went on. “Shivana did send some corrected papers to our contact in Minrathous. We should not face the same struggles, at least with the border crossing.”

“It’s troubling that there were struggles at all,” Gwynne said.

“I know,” Velriel said. “But that’s not for you to worry about. Ashara, would you like a chance to ride in the wagon?”

“No thank you, hahren,” she said. She was drawing lightly and consistently on the Fade, speeding her steps just a little and reducing her own fatigue. It was a skill she’d honed further and further in these last two years working for Vir'anor.

“Very well. I suppose I’ll continue resting these old bones.”

Velriel was older even than her mother. She could hardly believe he still did such strenuous work, tramping the length of Thedas several times a year with a pack of younger elves to watch over. She’d asked him about it when she first began working for Vir'anor.

“Isn’t your mother Dalish, girl?” He’d snorted. “I still haven’t gotten over the idea that my clan is just - settled down there in Enasan. I need to move. My daughters will forget how to find clean running water and a safe place to camp and my grandchildren will never know, and I suppose that was what we were always waiting for, wasn’t it? To have a new homeland? But for an old elf like me… I could not give this up.”

Maybe the effortless calm and safety her silver-haired hahren projected was why it was so easy for Ashara’s mind to wander to the night before - that snug flat in Minrathous’s upper quarter, and the rich scent of red wine filling her nose, and her stomach still twisting with disappointment.

It was the first time she’d been able to see Claudia Naevar in some months. Her friend was so busy now that she was a junior member of the Magisterium - little more than a clerk, but a member nonetheless. Those six months that Ashara had lived with Dorian and searched for a cure to stop the spread of the Anchor’s magic through her mother’s body would have been unbearable without Claudia’s help and support. It was good to acknowledge that again, and to celebrate the new flat that Claudia had acquired for herself - her first home on her own since Dorian took her in when she was fourteen. They ate, and opened one bottle of wine, and then another - and only then did they both truly begin to feel the absence of the other person who should have been with them.

“Have you spoken to him recently? Lucius?” Claudia asked in a lull in the conversation.

“No. Why?” Ashara had managed to wheedle herself into a curled up position directly next to Claudia on the bench of her dining room table. She was too warm and snug and full of good food to let the name sting at all. Whatever assurances they’d made to each other when their relationship ended, they had not seen each other much lately. Not outside of dreams, anyway.

“He’s seeing someone according to the gossip I heard,” Claudia replied. “I wanted to be nosy and find out who. I thought you might know.”

The room, which she’d praised earlier as spacious, felt close suddenly. How long had it been going on, who was this person, did he smile at them the way he used to smile at her in the mornings when he was still half-asleep and she kissed his nose -

“Oh,” Ashara said finally.

“What?” Claudia stopped staring off and focused on her instead. Ashara flushed under her attention, and started immediately trying to compose herself. She drew away from Claudia. The room lurched briefly. People always seemed to know what she was feeling before she did. She could never keep her feelings off of her face. She must have failed, because Claudia was frowning. “Why are you upset?”

“I don’t know. I hope whoever it is - I hope she’s good to him.”

Even Ashara winced at her tone. She didn’t want to sound wounded and uneasy. She did want Lucius to be happy. He was kind and gentle and good and he’d held her through some of the worst moments of her life - through the times she thought for sure Mamae would die, through everything that happened in the temple of Falon’Din - he deserved the happiness he couldn’t find with her. She wished, as usual, that she hadn’t drunk so much wine.

“You don’t have any claim on him. You should want him to be happy,” Claudia said. She’d pulled away enough to look Ashara in the eye.

“I know. I do.” Ashara could have left it there, but now there was a hot bubble in her chest and she needed to lance it. She needed Claudia to understand. Maybe it would help her understand. “I wasn’t the one to end things, you know.”

“But you didn’t fight him on it, either.”

The words flowed rapidly. Had Claudia been thinking about it all this time? They hadn’t really discussed what happened when their relationship ended - their fight, and Lucius’s quiet parting words: _we agreed if we ever weren’t making each other happy anymore.._ . Claudia had offered, of course, but Ashara didn’t want to talk about it at the time. She wanted to nurse her wounds in private. There was something embarrassing about them. It couldn’t be rational or normal, how much it hurt to know she would never hold his hand again or hear him call her _amata_. And then she and Lucius had agreed to be friends and she’d thought - well, now there’s no point in talking about it.

But - Claudia knew them better than most people. She’d been there for all those early moments, the shy flirtations, the push-pull. What if it had been a mistake, not asking her opinion at the time? Maybe she should have gotten lots of opinions, beyond Mamae’s gentle _I’m sorry, da’vhenan_ and Papae’s infuriating anger at the fact that _Lucius_ was the one who had the audacity to end things. It wasn’t too late. She could ask Claudia now, while she cleared the plates. If she waited much longer the moment would pass -

“Do you think I should have fought for him?”

Claudia put the plates back down on the table. Her voice was cool when she spoke. “I didn’t say that.”

Ashara felt a rush of humiliation for her vulnerability. It hardened her tone. “I swear you’re more of a politician every time I come here.”

“And is that a bad thing? Both of your parents are politicians - and you’re fooling yourself if you think the work you do isn’t political.”

They hit a pause, and studied each other. Ashara forced herself to take a breath. In, out. She reached for the smallest piece of the Fade she could, like she was pulling a blanket just a bit higher on a cold night. A little comfort.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“I know, Ash.” Claudia finished clearing the plates.

Ashara liked it when Claudia called her that. It made her think of the time they’d spent together two years ago on that journey from Minrathous to Skyhold - Claudia and Lucius calling her ‘Ash’ no matter how many times she insisted it wasn’t her name, until it stopped being an annoyance and became a secret affection. No one else called her that. Just them.

“I said something to him once,” Claudia went on. “In Skyhold. When you two were trying to figure out what you meant to each other. I told him that I thought you two were both searching for something, and that maybe you could find that something together - but that - kaffas, how did I say it? But that you might not find it together.  That you needed to be careful. I stand by that.”

“That’s still not an answer.”

Claudia’s shoulders slumped. “You’re going to obsess over this, aren’t you?”

“No,” Ashara said at once, as though her mind wasn’t already whirring, reimagining that night in the Fade when she came so ready to apologize for what she’d said only to have Lucius stop her cold with his insistence that they had to end things. Why did it feel so inevitable? Why didn’t she just - push harder?

“You always have been a terrible liar,” Claudia said.

And here she was. Minrathous already fading in the distance behind her. Obsessing.

She didn’t go to Lucius in the Fade that night, or the night after. She pushed back gently whenever her father sent one of his brief signals through the fabric of that shifting world, just enough to let him know she was there and all was well. She didn’t go to her mother, either. She just dreamed and tried to focus on the new memories she found. She wasn’t obsessing.

Once or twice she did call up memories of her own. Twilight walks and sitting close together in the theater in Minrathous. Having a trunk of her own things in his flat.

The pain faded the further into southern Tevinter they traveled. Instead it was replaced with a nagging worry. Claudia said they were both looking for something. Of course Ashara had been looking for something back then - looking for something to save her mother’s life, to stop the endless progression of that hateful green light, her father’s magic, tearing her apart. Was she still searching for something now?

The towns were all starting to look the same. This was all fresh and new when she joined Vir’anor. She used to delight in each new place. She was happy to move on quickly so she could get to the next one. Now she was restless, unenchanted, left wondering each day when they camped what would happen if she took a different fork in the road, or stayed somewhere longer than a day.

Velriel was the first to catch on to her gloom.

“Da’len, are you going to make that face all the way to Enasan?” He said when they were a week out of Minrathous, seated around their campfire. And, of course, before she could protest, Tamaris replied.

“Oh, thank the heavens, I thought I was the only one who saw it. Our poor little wolf, sulking her way through the countryside. You didn’t remark on my singing voice once yesterday, you know. I learned a whole new ballad just for you.”

“Not now, Tamaris.”

“Obviously. I did say it was yesterday, after all.”

“Ignore him,” Gwynne said tonelessly. She didn’t even look up from the letter she was writing to her own younger brothers, who were the source of her endless patience with the youngest member of their crew. Ashara wondered what she would’ve been like, if she had younger siblings. Maybe then she would feel less like throwing the nearest small object at Tamaris every time he opened his mouth.

Ashara turned to Velriel instead. “I don’t mean to make a face. I just have some - things on my mind. It won’t interfere with our work.”

“Good. Then you’ll start teaching the Agostis Elvhen tomorrow instead of moping alongside the wagon.”

“Yes, hahren.”

She did enjoy teaching people Elvhen. Sitting in the wagon with Livia, Vito, and Sylvio was a good distraction from the nagging in the back of her mind - _what am I looking for now_? Livia took to the lessons the quickest. She was a small, dark-eyed woman, hawk-like in her focus. She asked good questions.

“If _da_ means little - what is it that Tamaris calls you? Da’fen? What does that one mean? Little…?”

Ashara snorted. “Little wolf.”

“But - you are taller than him. And older. And not a wolf.”

“Yes. Tamaris thinks he’s very funny, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

The last name Lavellan did provoke questions from some of the bolder immigrants they escorted, but it didn’t appear that the Agostis were that type. Ashara didn’t like drawing attention to who her parents were, even as she missed them each day, even as she felt a surge of pride when she reminded herself of who she was (that surge of pride was another good distraction).

“And it really won’t be a problem if we don’t speak that much Elvhen when we get there?” Livia asked on another day.

“Not at all. I don’t know the exact numbers, but I don’t think more than half of Enasan speaks it fluently. Most young elves do, of course, because they learn it in school.”

“Is that where you learned it?”

“Well - no. It’s one of my first languages. My father only spoke Elvhen to me when I was a baby, and my mother only spoke Trade. I spoke both by the time I was old enough for school.”

She didn’t spell out the implications of that, but she watched them in Livia’s eyes. It was enough to guess, surely, that her father was one of the awakened Elvhen. It was common enough knowledge in Thedas that such people existed, now.

“I see.”

Later that night, she saw Livia scribbling something onto a piece of vellum that was already covered in her cramped writing. She’d started painstakingly writing crosswise across it - some old trick to save the precious material. Ashara made sure to buy her a fresh, blank book in the next town.

“For your studies. I insist,” she said, pressing it into the other woman’s hands. She was only two years older than Ashara herself, and yet she seemed both older and younger depending on the moment. In that moment, she looked as small and excited and nervous as a child.

“Ma serannas,” Livia said, without stuttering once over the syllables.

Later that night, Ashara watched them sit a little ways apart from the rest of the group and start to practice, each of them one after the other, mother, father, and son, tracing the shapes of the ancient words. Her heart swelled. She wasn’t looking for anything at all. She did good work here. She helped people find their way to better lives, shared the culture she was proud of, kept up the good work her parents started. Nothing was missing.

Except that by the time they were part of the way through Nevarra she was restless again. How could she be restless when they covered so many miles a day? But she was. And then she would sit at the fire and see Livia and Vito and little Sylvio - their quiet, intimate world apart from the rest of them - and then she would wonder fiercely, suddenly, what that was like.

“How old were you when you were wed?” She asked Livia one day.

“Oh - twenty-one. Why?”

“No reason.”

Ashara had turned twenty-two not long ago. Mamae was sixteen when she wed, loved, and lost Mahanon. Then again, how old _was_ Papae when he fell in love with Mamae? And Mamae did say what she felt for Papae more than ten years after being widowed was more real and true than what she’d felt for Mahanon - and yes, she’d loved Lucius, she knew that was true, and she loved his little flat and the little domesticities they shared there but she didn’t want it all the time, she wanted that and she wanted the freedom of waking up and going exactly where she was needed, exactly where there was something new to learn -

“It’s getting a little cold, you know,” Tamaris said. “And you’re making the face again.”

Ashara snapped back to the moment. “Sorry.”

She widened her connection to the Fade once again - because it was never turned off, not really, not anymore, she was experimenting to see just how much strength and sustenance she could draw from it at all times - seeking the heat she must have let slip away in her agitation. A southerly wind was chilling all of them, and it was one of her jobs as their mage to keep them comfortable through it. All of the teams working for Vir’anor - whether they worked primarily with immigrants from Antiva or Rivain or the Anderfels or Ferelden - had at least one mage. That mage was responsible for everything from putting up a barrier to keep off the rain to lighting the campfires to healing minor injuries. They were like Dalish Keepers, Firsts, and Seconds in many ways. Velriel had tried to defer to Ashara once or twice when they first started traveling together out of some instinctive Dalish respect for mages. It didn’t last long, of course. Maybe there were other groups where the mage was the leader, but it wasn’t the case with theirs.

Her time with Vir’anor had been good for Ashara’s practice as a mage. She’d always been a natural with elemental magics - she would never forget the breathtaking moment she summoned a small, perfect flame in the palm of her eight-year-old hand - and her time in school had given her at the very least a theoretical grounding in every other main school of magic. Her father supplemented that, of course, with basic training as a rift mage. Dorian had tried to show her one or two necromantic tricks. But all of that really came down to killing things, and Ashara didn’t want to be the sort of person who was only good for death. Now she was good at a little bit of healing, at setting warning wards around their camp, at sending out a low, constant hum of Creation energy that allowed everyone to stay stronger, more energetic, more alert.

There was death, too, like the night in Nevarra when she sat bolt upright in her bedroll at the feeling of ice pouring down her spine, the sound of twigs snapping in her ears and the low growl of wolves - one of her wards being tripped.

“Up,” she said, voice hoarse with sleep. “Everyone up.”

It was second nature now, pulling on her light armor over her sleeping clothes and making sure her mother’s old hunting knife was on her belt just in case and attuning her senses to her second set of wards while she directed the Agosti family to follow her and told Velriel and Gwynne which direction the wolves were coming from.

“How far?” Tamaris called, readying an arrow.

Another stab down her spine - heat, this time, the second set of wards, and the tug came from somewhere to the northeast of them.

“Three hundred feet that way,” she said. He began to aim. She turned to the Agostis, frightened and pale in their nightclothes. She tried to make her voice both gentle and firm, imitating the tone she’d heard a hundred times from her mother. “Tight circle, behind me. I’m going to put glyphs around us, so stay close.”

She wove the intricate shapes with staff and hand until they glowed to life in a circle around them, heat already radiating - then she cast barriers over Gwynne and Velriel as they charged the first of the wolves, and then she listened carefully for those particular spirits and energies that she could channel in a wide blanket to strengthen all of them against whatever was coming. Then it was staffwork - lobbing simple attacks, calling out the movement of the wolves, renewing the barriers, taking out a flanking wolf with a swift Stonefist. She knew all the theories behind why she did this, and she had put them into action at least once on every trip they made between Tevinter and Enasan, but still Ashara found that her fingers trembled when the wolves were all dead, and she was putting her staff away once more.

“Did it hurt?” Tamaris asked when he was done retrieving his arrows, and Ashara had come back from resetting her wards.

“Did what hurt?” She asked. The tremble was gone from her hands, but her heart was still beating too fast. She fiddled with her mother’s knife. At least she hadn’t had to use it.

“Killing your brothers and sisters of course, da’fen. I keep waiting for you to turn into one and join them when this happens. Didn’t your father ever teach you that?”

Ashara sighed. “Spirits, I hope it’s your turn for watch right now. I hope you have to stay up until dawn and your eyes hurt all day tomorrow.”

“Now, now. You know you would make me feel better if they did. You’re entirely too nice.”

She returned to her tent, rather than engage him further. Her first year with Vir’anor, they had a different scout - an older woman from Velriel’s clan, a hunter. She was the one who taught Ashara how to choose a good campsite and look for signs of game - or, as Mamae so often told her, reminded her of the lessons she’d heard a dozen times since she was a child ( _of course you choose to remember them now that someone else is teaching you, you traitor_ ). If only she hadn’t retired.

She settled back into her bedroll, and focused on Gwynne’s quiet breathing beside her, and on memories of her mother and father. She was Ashara Lavellan, mage who protected others, who passed on the ancient Elvhen tongue, daughter of a Dalish hunter who guided people through the wilderness. She wasn’t looking for anything.

*

Except she was.

And it was unseasonably cold in Orlais and she missed the thought of having someone who loved her and more importantly she missed Lucius and his brown eyes and his soft smile and the way he said her name, and she wondered over and over if she was wrong to let him go just because she wanted to wander the wilds so more if every day they spent tramping through those very wilds seemed to weigh on her like lead, and there was no one she could talk to about it.

Velriel was dismissive, a veteran of a hundred so-called “silly crushes” from his daughters’ youth. He asked once or twice what was wrong but gave up before they got far into Orlais, knowing it was nothing he could fix.

Gwynne was - well, Gwynne. She’d only joined them a few months before, and she hadn’t really warmed to Ashara yet. She suspected it was something to do with the fact that Gwynne spent the first eleven years of her life in the alienage in Denerim, that she had stories about humans spitting on her in the streets, that her parents survived not just a Blight but the sale of their friends and family into slavery by a mad teryn. She spoke secondhand Elvhen and lost both parents and a little sister to a plague that swept the eastern part of Enasan many years ago - one that left Ashara in her snug home with its happy childhood memories untouched. She was only part of Vir’anor because she was a good warrior, and it was one of the best ways she could provide for her remaining siblings. She was unfailingly kind to the immigrants they escorted though. Every trip, every time, no matter who they were or what they were like. Sylvio, who retained his childish shyness even after they crossed the sea into Orlais, smiled only when he was talking to Gwynne.

And Tamaris?

Well.

Tamaris would have been all too happy to discuss her feelings, just as he was happy to discuss the color of clouds, Steel Age Orlesian poetry, and the consistency of his morning shit.

In fact, he kept trying to bring her feelings up at the worst moments, like when they were out gathering firewood one night.

“You know, if you’re so bothered by whatever lover scorned you, I’d be happy to take the job,” he said when she’d failed to laugh at his fifth joke about the fact that they were collecting wood together.

Ashara didn’t even have the words left to express her rage. She’d spent all day trying to think of what exactly she could do with her life and she’d come up with nothing and maybe this started with Lucius but it wasn’t only about him anymore and _of course_ Tamaris had to take it that way -

She made an incoherent sound of frustration, dropped the wood she’d gathered, and stormed away from him instead. She lost herself in the cold evening air and the crunch of the leaves under her feet until she was on a riverbank - one she’d seen before, she realized when she glanced around. Of course. That was why they often chose this campsite. Everything was the same now. Did she want that or not? She sat down on the bank.

“Very well, Ashara,” Tamaris sighed when he found her, sitting down heavily beside her with his usual lack of grace. “I have obviously upset you.”

“I don’t appreciate you making fun of me,” Ashara said. She didn’t bother to hide the ire in her tone.

“I am only trying to make you smile. You’ve been so serious, this trip.”

“It isn’t working.”

“Then I apologize.”

There was no sound after that but the gentle rush of the stream. Ashara toed a rock loose and watched it fall into the water. The heat in her cheeks faded, and as it always did, her anger left only embarrassment behind when it was gone.

“I accept your apology,” she said at last, meeting his eyes. Tamaris looked thoughtful, and almost surprised, like he’d just finished working something out.

“You really loved him, didn’t you? That Lucius? It’s been a whole year since you parted ways, but… that is what’s bothering you, isn’t?”

“Lucius - isn’t the only reason I’m upset. But - yes. I did love him. I don’t think I even realized how much, until -” But, no, she couldn’t share that moment after all, not with anyone - that moment when she was lying beneath Lucius, the last time they’d lain together, looking up at him and realizing with a clarity she’d never really felt before just what she was about to lose. She’d spent a year burying that clarity. Now it wore at her insides.

“I see. Well. I promise not to tease so much anymore, my friend.” He lurched to his feet, stretched, and assumed his usual grin. “But if you get cold at night - you know which tent is mine.”

Ashara rolled her eyes. “I don’t sleep with short elves whose sole goal in life is to irritate me.”

“Good. I don’t sleep with women who act like irritating older sisters.”

They finished gathering their firewood and walked back in companionable silence. The Agostis joined them at the communal fire that night instead of taking their meals separately, and it was a peaceful evening. Velriel told stories his Keeper once told him, and Tamaris interrupted with corrections from his own Dalish mother’s clan, and Gwynne held Sylvio on her lap until he slept, smiling softly at him. Ashara blanketed them all with layers of intricate wards and breathed in the smell of the woodsmoke and reminded herself that she didn’t have to decide her entire life in a night.

“Did Tamaris finally make a pass at you?” Gwynne asked the next day, when they were stopped in a small fishing village to check for news and resupply. The two of them had been given the task of keeping an eye on the wagon and the Agostis.

“What?”

“Sorry, did you want it in Elvhen?”

“Of course not. What makes you ask that?”

“Just that he hasn’t spent the entire morning trying to show off for you like he usually does.”

“What?”

Gwynne rolled her eyes. It was an expression Ashara was all too familiar with on the other elf’s face.

“Honestly. You’re pretty as the day is long, a mage, half-Elvhen, and the child of two of the most powerful people in Thedas, and yet you always act like you’re unaware of all of those things. What did you think Tamaris was doing? I figured it out before we were even out of Enasan on our first trip together.”

Ashara’s neck felt hot with embarrassment. She wasn’t unaware of those things. She just - didn’t think they mattered as much as others seemed to.

“I thought he was acting like an idiot.”

Gwynne snorted. “Well, you have him there. But he was acting like an idiot for your benefit. It’s what the boys in the alienage did. Pulling on my pigtails and the like. I hated it. I hope you turned him down if he did ask.”

“I don’t know how serious he was - but for the record, I did tell him it wasn’t going to happen.”

“Good.” Gwynne paused then, considering. “But you’re not one of those who think she’s too good for other elves, are you?”

“I’m sorry?”

“What, you don’t know the type? Some elves want human men more than their own kind. They’re taller, richer - and if they manage to get with child, their children will be human and have more opportunities. I’ve seen it before, now and then. Of course, some women are the opposite and think you’re a traitor for daring to dilute the blood of the People. I guess you see more of that sort in Enasan. That’s what I would have pegged you for, if I hadn’t found out about your human so quickly after I joined.”

When Ashara talked to Gwynne she often felt like she was missing half of the conversation. It was strange. Any Orlesian passing by them now would look at them and see two elves and think no further than that. They would have no idea of the gulf of different experiences that could sit between two people with pointed ears.

“I don’t think I’m either type,” Ashara said finally. “I think I just see people.”

“Fair enough.” But Gwynne didn’t sound satisfied with her answer.

“You shouldn’t trust them.” Livia’s voice startled them both. She was watching them with dark, serious eyes, Sylvio asleep on her shoulder. “Humans. Especially not human men. And certainly never one from Tevinter. I would know.”

“Not all of them,” Ashara said at once.

“Maybe so. But it must be enough of them, right? Why else would we need Enasan?”

Why, indeed.

Of the people traveling with them, only Ashara and Tamaris had been born and raised in the new elven republic. Only they had known a life where humans were rare as the sun in winter. Ashara in fact remembered with startling clarity when she first new that she was in fact, elven - or, at least, what that meant. It was on the first trip she remembered taking out of the country, when she was seven years old and went to King Alistair’s court with her mother and father. Her mother held her chin tight so she couldn’t look away and told her:

“If you get lost anywhere - in the castle, in Denerim - you find another elf. A female elf, if you can. Do you understand?”

“But why not a guard, like back home?”

“All of the guards will be human. They will - they will not look at you the way they would look at a little human girl. You just have to believe me, da’len. If you get lost, find another elf.”

She understood now the warning her mother offered her in those moments, in terms a child could understand. And she understood then that she was, in fact, something different. Something rarer. Something vulnerable. But it still wasn’t something that shaped her life. There were comments now and then on the streets of Minrathous, of course - the men who whistled and followed them, the ones Lucius nearly fought on her behalf, when they were still together - but Ashara didn’t spend much time thinking about what it meant that she was an elf. She thought even less about the thornier question - what it meant that she was half-Elvhen.

When Velriel and Tamaris returned to the wagon, it was with stony faces. Tamaris was reading and rereading a piece of parchment in his hands.

“What is it?” Ashara asked.

“The route we usually take. They’ve increased the tolls significantly. Something about new construction ordered by Empress Celene. We’ll have to take the western road to Verchiel instead if we don’t want to run out of money,” Tamaris said. He added a few choice Orlesian swear words, no doubt picked up from his father, at the end.

“And then drop south through the Dales to Enasan? Won’t that take longer?”

“Yes, but we can hunt in the Dales if we’re careful to ensure that we aren’t in some lord’s private forest - or if we’re careful enough not to get caught. Then we’ll cross the Deauvin Flats and enter Enasan through Oruvun and travel by eluvian to the capital instead.”

It seemed like a reasonable plan. There were no objections. Velriel stewed about it for the rest of the day though - unusual for him.

“I don’t like the way the Orlesian guards looked at us.”

“Don't they always treat you badly?" Vito asked.  
  
"Not as much as they used to. Not like when I was young, when my vallaslin would have made them scream and hide the children."  
  
"Just a bad group of guards, maybe," Ashara said.  
  
"Maybe," Velriel said, but the lines of his vallaslin were twisted by his frown.  
  
Ashara did think sometimes about how much had changed for elves before and during her lifetime. She'd written to Varric in shock when she was old enough to read _the Tale of the Champion_ , convinced he'd made up the story about the magistrate's son who murdered elven children with near impunity until Marian Hawke stepped in. He'd written back only to say _kid, I'm just happy you live in a world where that seems impossible._  
  
Taking a different route through the Dales took Ashara's mind off things for a while. She hadn't been through the western part of Orlais for many years. Each hill and valley and quaint country estate was new. Tamaris eased off of his teasing. Gwynne grew less abrasive. Vito no longer looked back over his shoulder at the end of the day like he was still hoping to see Minrathous. Livia and Sylvio were capable of halting conversation in Elvhen, and Sylvio even crawled willingly into her lap one night at the fire, and leaned all of his weight against her chest while they shared stories of their lives.

In dreams Ashara checked in with her mother and father - Mamae was going to Orlais, some big party Celene was holding, but there was no time for them to meet up - Papae was staying behind at home and would see her when she arrived - he gave his usual reminders about how to undo his wards if she got home while he was out, as if she was still thirteen and first allowed to go out on her own - and once or twice she reached out until she could just feel the fuzz of Lucius' dreams, the texture of his thoughts. Nothing he would notice, probably. She could drop in if she wanted. She would have if it seemed like his dreams were dark or frightened. But she hesitated. She wanted to know about this new woman, and she didn't. Maybe if she waited long enough to see him, the relationship would be over, and she wouldn't ever have to know.

*  
The further south they got the more the landscape reminded her of home. The trees were taller, wilder, and darker. She saw occasional flashes of the mysterious, colorful birds that roosted in her homeland. Stormheart gleamed in river banks.  
  
"Is this what Enasan looks like?" Livia asked.  
  
"Yes," Ashara said. "I think it's the most beautiful place in Thedas."  
  
She wasn't looking for anything. She was nearly home.  
  
They hit their second to last stop - a checkpoint crossing into the province that bordered Enasan - and were told that instead of going to the nearest border crossing they should head further east to a different one. Something about a broken bridge. They were all in a good mood by then. The guards were polite in their request. They'd had good luck hunting through the Dales and had enough money to stock up on one or two small luxuries like fresh bread and soap and, after much discussion, a bottle of wine to share on their first night in Enasan.  
  
"It's an occasion worth celebrating," Gwynne said. "Coming home for the first time."  
  
The border crossing they were directed to was in a small town with a wide field beyond it. It was clearly a market town, the kind of place that would swell to bursting on market day when farmers from the surrounding area poured in. They saw few people on their way down the road to where the soldiers waited. Their stares were not friendly. Their eyes lingered on her. Ashara was reminded of another warning - one from her father this time.  
  
"Be careful in the smaller towns, whatever country you are in. The staff on your back is target enough without your pointed ears."  
  
It was good they were only passing through. They went straight to the guardhouse on the other side of the town. She did like the pretty blue shutters on their windows, though. Some of their homes had beautiful stenciled paintings on their whitewashed walls, too. Bright purple and red flowers. She wished they could have stopped longer so she could study them, or maybe to ask the owners if they meant something, how long they'd been there, but she would take the one or two minutes she had now while Velriel spoke to the guard...  
  
"These papers are out of order."  
  
The soldier who spoke was fresh-faced and eager, but his words were firm.  
  
Velriel blinked once, hard. "I'm sorry?"  
  
"These papers. The signatures are false. Are you trying to bring criminals through the empire of Orlais?"  
  
"What? How -"  
  
"Were you planning to cross the border with them?"  
  
"Ser, the signatures are not false -"  
  
"Captain!"  
  
It wasn't real. They weren't standing here, having this conversation. Ashara didn't feel afraid. She just felt confused. There was no problem with the papers. No one else anywhere in Tevinter or Nevarra or Orlais had an issue with them. This would be sorted out. What was wrong with this man?  
  
Livia pulled Sylvio close to herself. Vito put himself in front of them. Gwynne and Tamaris were behind them, in the very back of their party, standing very still. Ashara stood in front of them, closest to Velriel - and then closest to the captain when she emerged from a small nearby building. She was an older woman with iron gray hair wearing full plate. She walked with purpose towards them.  
  
"Single file. Hands out."

 _What?_ But there was nothing wrong -  
  
"Ser, I must -" Velriel began.  
  
"Are you resisting me, knife ear?" Her voice was cool. One hand was on the hilt of her sword.  
  
"No, ser, but our papers are in order, and I must know where you plan on taking us and why." Velriel was calm. His hands were in front of him, palms up, nowhere near his own sword.  
  
"Then be a good rabbit, and get in line."  
  
_This isn't happening._ Ashara still wasn’t afraid. She drew on just a little of the Fade, just enough to set her blood humming, but it was to comfort herself with the familiar feeling, not to fight. This would all be resolved. They’d done nothing wrong. Why were her feet rooted in place?  
  
"This is a load of shit," Tamaris said, coming forward suddenly, passing the others until he was right in front of the captain. "You're not taking us anywhere. We're walking straight down that road to Enasan. We are going -”

The captain didn’t draw her sword. The knife next to it was quicker to draw. And it slit his throat just the same.

Tamaris made a shocked, gurgling sound. Everything was still.

“Go,” Velriel said hoarsely.

One, two, three, four soldiers, and the captain. Were there more? Ashara hadn’t thought to count before. This wasn’t happening. One came towards her. She Fade stepped, the world a blur, stopping when she was behind their party, where she was supposed to be -

Behind unarmed Livia and Vito and Sylvio.

She flung her barrier around them and pulled her staff off her back. She whirled it around, aligning it to the Fade. She needed to be fast. Soldiers were closing in, more than four now, they came out of the buildings with the beautiful painted flowers. Livia was screaming. Sylvio was in her arms. She was running. Ashara needed to cast the barrier again but Livia was moving so quickly. Gwynne had her blades out. Why was this happening? She couldn’t use fire. The soldiers were all so close to her friends.

“The mage!”

The soldier’s roar was her only warning. The captain was charging, shield up, but if she could make a glyph in time for the captain to run across it the shield wouldn’t matter -

Ashara couldn’t breathe.

The smite hit her with the force of a tidal wave. Her throat closed. Her staff fell from her hand. She couldn’t move. Sparks danced at the edges of her vision. Her magic, her magic, her magic was gone and she was falling and the captain was charging and she was going to die -

The next sound that reached her was Vito’s scream. Incoherent Tevene. An animal scream. The sky was so very blue above her. She was on her back. Where was the charging captain with iron gray hair? Gwynne. Gwynne had tackled her, pinned her, but she was bleeding so much and the captain had her gauntleted hand around Gwynne’s throat. Crushing it. Gwynne’s face was red. Red with blood.

Blood.

There were demons pressing close, shrieking in her ear now that she listened. _Let us help let us stop them let us in._ They were going to die. They were going to die on this green field in Orlais if she didn’t _get up_ and they could help if she would only let them in -

One voice was louder. Falon’Din. The memory of him. Of what she’d seen through his eyes in the temple when he invaded her mind and her body. She didn’t need the demons. The magic was already in her blood.

Ashara pulled her mother’s old hunting knife from her belt and slit her arm clean open.

The blood was hot on her arm but it made her strong enough to feel her magic again, to stand, to see -

Tamaris and his slit throat. Gwynne’s staring eyes and the odd angle of her neck. Velriel facedown in the dirt. Vito’s stomach spilt on the ground. And the captain and the soldiers all turning her way.

Ashara called on the power in her blood, and when the fire rained down from the sky, it didn’t come from the Fade but from everywhere inside her all at once. There was no clean snap of the magic crossing the Veil. Just the raw energy, the heat in her own veins. The soldiers were screaming. Burning. Some were running towards her. More fire. This fireball cracked loudly before it exploded outwards, before it consumed them. She smelled burning metal, blood, something like charcoal, a kitchen smell she didn’t want to place -

Her hands shook. She knew, somewhere in her mind, that she needed to run. But instead she stood there on that green field and watched as they burned, every last one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to [WardsAreFunctioning](http://archiveofourown.org/users/WardsAreFunctioning/pseuds/WardsAreFunctioning) for being my sounding board for this fic!
> 
> Prompts, suggestions, comments and general discussion more than welcome here or on my [Tumblr](https://buttsonthebeach.tumblr.com/).


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for those that read/commented/left kudos/subscribed last time! Let’s check in with Ellana. If you want to see the dress she's wearing, [click here](http://s42.radikal.ru/i098/1111/d9/9769a4cacd10.jpg)!

 

The portrait of Ellana Lavellan in the Winter Palace was an image of a woman who never existed. She had no vallaslin - but she also had flowing, thick red hair that covered her pointed ears. There was a hint of curl in it, but the artist had made no attempt to capture the dense thicket of kinky curls that her hair truly was when it was that long - or to acknowledge that she had never once worn her hair so long while she was Inquisitor, let alone on that fateful night that she led the faithful from the wreckage of Haven. There were at least a dozen other inconsistencies - her skin a shade too light, her eyes not wide and round enough, her body thicker and curvier after the fashion of a human woman.

There was no excuse for these inaccuracies, of course. It had been painted from life. Ellana remembered standing there frozen for hours, numb from the draughts the healers gave her because she was still in so much pain after the amputation of her arm, Solas’s words echoing through her mind. _I wish it could, vhenan_. She was still numb when they showed her the final painting. It was not her. She didn’t care then. She was wondering if she would ever feel like herself again. If it really mattered, in the end, if they wanted history to remember their dark-skinned elven Herald as someone paler and more human. Wasn’t it inevitable, that what happened to Ameridan would happen to her? And who knew if people would still be there to care about it all, in the end, or if Solas would -

Now, twenty-four years later, half a glass of champagne buzzing through her head and her bare toes curling in the thick Orlesian rug, Ellana cursed her younger self for a fool.

“How well do you think Celene would react if I publicly gifted her a portrait of myself the way I actually looked during the retreat from Haven?” Ellana said when she heard the soft footfalls behind her. Briala, at last. “Vallaslin, pointed ears, dark skin and all? We can add some blood and bruises and a scowl for good measure.”

“You know as well as I do that it would not go well, given the current situation.”

So Briala was not in the mood for hypotheticals this evening. Ellana took another sip of the champagne, rolled the bitter-bright taste across her tongue, steeled herself, and turned to the other elf.

“Celene isn’t coming, is she.” She did not phrase it as a question.

“No.”

“Shit.” Ellana didn’t say it with much feeling. She hadn’t gotten her hopes up when she made the journey for this party. “Have you spoken with her healers?”

“Yes. I came straight to you afterwards. Their outlook is - not optimistic.”

“And they still haven’t found anything to confirm or deny that this illness is natural, and not the result of poison?”

“No more than your healers seemed to be able to confirm or deny the source of your mysterious illness, ambassador.”

Ellana grimaced at Briala’s little victory. She should probably have been trying harder to play off her comment, but she was already saving her strength. This would be the least trying meeting of her evening. What was Briala implying, anyway? That she _did_ know the source of Celene’s illness, and was not going to share it for whatever political reasons of her own? Was she trying to shame Ellana for her own lack of transparency when she had been sick? If Celene had been poisoned, what benefit would it be to Briala to keep that a secret, when Ellana had offered to try and determine the source of the foul play, if there was any?

_Fuck._

At least she hadn’t reached the point in the night where she felt the urge to say it out loud yet.

“Then let us wish Celene as speedy a recovery as my own,” she said instead, raising her glass and then draining it.

“There have been comments,” Briala admitted. “Pointing out the - unusual timing of your return to politics, and the beginnings of Celene’s own illness.”

“I’m not surprised. Are they from credible sources?”

“Not really. Anyone who knows anything is aware that you and your country stand to lose much if Celene dies unexpectedly. She has been your most steadfast ally - whether she wanted to be or not.”

Ellana nodded, and wished not for the first time that they had been able to keep her recovery a secret. She’d joked to Solas that they ought to simply spread word that she had died so that she could avoid returning to exactly these sort of functions: the labyrinthine politics, the _ifs_ and _maybes_ and lies and legacies. He hadn’t liked that. He’d taken a sudden, hard hold on her hand and looked into her eyes.

“I do not want to live in a world where I am even pretending that I lost you.”

She hadn’t made the joke again.

But gods, was it tempting on nights like this.

“Is there any other news you think I should know?”

“Yes. The Marquis de Pelletier is here.”

Ellana was going to have a headache before she even went into the party.

“Of course he is.”

“You say that, but I had not expected him. He initially declined the invitation as far as my sources have uncovered. I do not like that.” Briala crossed her arms.

“I don’t like anything about him.”

“On that we can agree, ambassador.”

“That isn’t technically my title anymore, Briala. And aren’t we a little beyond titles, at this point?”

Briala gave her a thin-lipped smile. “So you still claim that you are not returning to your old role? Even though it has been at least a year since you got well?”

A bell chimed and, as usual, it sent a jolt down Ellana’s spine. That meant it was nearly time.

“I am not. Ambassador Tabris is here tonight as the official representative of Enasan. You know my invitation came from Celene personally - though I wonder what message it will send for me to sit by an empty chair, now.”

“Not one that will benefit either of us.”

“No indeed.”

Briala was being unusually curt, Ellana acknowledged at last. Her arms remained crossed. It was almost a protective stance. Not the posture of a well-trained courtier. She wondered for the first time if the other woman had managed to actually see Celene - if she had come directly from her bedside. She thought back once more to those long years of illness, magic burning under her skin, the hard cold fear it had wrought in Solas, the way it twisted him up inside for months and months and months as he tried to accept that he could not save her.

“I am very sorry Celene is ill,” Ellana said at last. “Not just because of the politics.”

She stopped short of reaching out to touch Briala. It was the right decision. She saw that at once when the other elf’s eyes met her own. They were cold.

“Your concern is misplaced as usual. I will see you inside.”

Ellana sighed. “Yes.”

The second bell rang as Briala disappeared, her footsteps quiet as ever. Neither of them had ever stopped being the rogues they were when they first met, though time and circumstance had pushed them further and further from that role. Ellana looked back at the portrait again as Briala melted away into the shadows. This picture of a woman who never existed. It did not matter so much. It was only one image, in a small, out of the way chamber in the Winter Palace. What mattered was the woman she was when she left this room and went out there, into the chaos that waited. The only legacy that mattered was the one she left behind for her people.

She took a breath, turned, and began her walk to the ballroom.

*

Everything Ellana wore that evening was the product of careful decisions. All of it was a study in concession and rebellion, human and elven. A long, glittering white and gold dress, and not a tunic and leggings. The neckline was high (she was a married woman in her fifties, after all, as the girl who dressed her felt the need to remark) but it fit her tightly through her hips (she was still pretty for her age by their standards, though she did still have to wiggle herself, grumbling, into a sort of girdle to smooth out the softness of her stomach where it had never recovered from childbearing). The cut of the dress was a new Orlesian style, the skirts belling out at the bottom, but the rich gold designs adorning it were distinctly elven. Flowers and plants of all kinds, and not pretty, cultivated ones - the kind you found in a wild field left untouched by man. Then there were her three greatest rebellions: her bare toes, the bare stump of her left arm, and her untamed red curls. Not straightened, not pinned down, but free and ringing her face.  
  
But even these were calculated risks, she reminded herself as she entered the ballroom. Just rebellious enough to remind them that she didn't come to Orlais as a meek follower, bending her knee to the humans, but as an equal. Former Chief Ambassador of the Elven Republic of Enasan, former Inquisitor, the Herald of Andraste. Ellana Lavellan. She reminded them with every stride that she was elven, and every eye that fell on her left arm saw the evidence of what she had sacrificed to save them all. The ragged scars of magical energy and the neat surgical scar where the skin was folded over. She understood now the power of a dress, unlike when she was the irritated Inquisitor who’d pitched a fit and refused to wear one to Halamshiral so many years before. Vivienne would be proud. Ellana walked with her head held high.

“Madame Lavellan!”

It took a moment to place the fine-boned young elf curtseying before her. She wore a half-mask but her big brown eyes and the shape of her mouth were still familiar.

“Vianne? That can’t be you.”

“I will have to try and be someone else then.” She had a laugh like bells. It was a little rehearsed - but still charming. The smile that accompanied it was genuine.

“You must be - eighteen now? Am I right?”

“You have a good memory, madame. I turned eighteen last month.” Vianne stepped closer, on the pretext of getting out of someone’s way. She took the opportunity to speak more quietly. “My mother sent me to tell you that the seats have been rearranged. Legrand will sit in Celene’s place.”

Vianne may not have been Briala’s child by blood, but her every movement spoke of her mother nonetheless. Ellana had watched Vianne grow up in fits and starts since Briala took her in as a babe, sometimes seeing the girl several times in one year, sometimes going years at a time without seeing her, depending what diplomatic functions they attended. She had not seen Vianne in the last three years or so, though. Seeing her now, young and excited and yet also grown, made Ellana miss Ashara with a strength she felt in the center of her chest. Twenty-two and bright as sunlight on snow. She had not seen her in four months. She rarely saw her for longer than a week at a time now.

“Excellent. Thank you, Vianne.”

Vianne curtsied again, then wove her way into the crowd, the irrepressible skip of a child still in her step, however old she was.

Ellana continued into the ballroom, mingling. It was what she was there for, after all. To be seen. Her greatest power had always been as a symbol, so there she was: displaying herself as such. She didn’t like it. She already felt tense at the number of people, at the amount of small talk, at the stares at her brown skin and kinky red hair ( _people see our hair and think of Rivaini barbarians no matter how refined we are,_ Vivienne told her once. _You must know this_ ) and the scars on her left arm and the points of her ears. But this was what they needed her for. To be reminded that the most well-known elf in Thedas was here, and that she supported the joint venture Celene was celebrating.

Well, she was perhaps the second most well-known elf in Thedas. But people had only to look at the runed silverite wedding ring on her right hand to be reminded of the other.

Eventually, she made her way to Ilriane Tabris where she stood surrounded by elves and Orlesian courtiers alike. Here was another woman Ellana had watched grow. Ilriane came into her service at the age of eighteen, an immigrant from a Fereldan family out of Denerim who’d finished her schooling in Enasan and shown great aptitude for speaking, writing, and history. When Ellana saw her potential, she had her sent to Antiva for further training, and she came back a poised, knowledgeable, capable young diplomat, fluent in four languages, and ready to take on more and more responsibilities in the politics of Enasan.

Ellana would still be lying if she didn’t admit that she’d felt a twinge of anxiety handing her post over to Ilriane when she got too sick to go on with her duties. She hated politics. She did. But finally giving that power away, for good, knowing the fate of the homeland she’d carved from chaos and death was in someone else’s hands forever…

Well, at least Ilriane was a better politician than she’d ever been. Smiling, charming, polite, educated, conventionally pretty enough for them. She’d even dropped the Fereldan accent with time. She was the face of a new generation of elves.

“Lady Lavellan,” Ilriane greeted when she approached. “How kind of you to join us. I was just telling Monsieur Donadieu that he must commission Athras Dupont to decorate his new villa.”

Dupont. Artist? Yes, one of the elves honored in the salon Celene was hosting to celebrate the twenty years of good relations between Orlais and Enasan. One of many artists - and inventors, and scholars, and politicians - all of them singing the praises of their alliance and the good it had brought their countries. She summoned a fuzzy image of one of his paintings to her mind’s eye.

“Yes, he is remarkable. He’s working to blend the ancient Elvhen styles with modern Orlesian tastes. His murals are quite impressive.”

“We shall see,” Donadieu said stiffly. Ellana didn’t recognize his name. He wasn’t anyone important two years ago when she was last actively playing their Game. No title. A powerful merchant, maybe?

“You really should,” Ellana said. “The empress told me that she fully intends to have him do work here in the Winter Palace.”

“Indeed. A shame that she could not be here to say so herself.”

“Yes. A shame.”

A year ago, this salon might have worked. A year ago, Orlais had not been hit by a drought that killed their crops. A year ago, Celene was in good health, and she would have been on the ballroom floor herself, working her nobles, assuring them that the unrest in the lower classes was nothing to fear. Her absence was like a shattered window letting in cold air. Their reassurances were fooling no one. Celene was dying, and the sharks were circling, and the people of Orlais were hungry and angry and Enasan, the new elven homeland, was the perfect target for scheming nobles and bitter peasants alike.

So Ellana mingled, and dropped reminders of the times she’d directed aid to struggling provinces or supported the Chantry’s outreach to elves or helped mediate a conflict between Orlais and Ferelden, or assisted with freeing Fort Revasan, or prevented Corypheus from plunging their country into darkness forever…

But she knew what many of them saw. Not the white and gold dress. Not the missing left arm. They still saw only the pointed ears, and the empty chair where Celene should have presided.

At least de Pelletier didn’t seem to be anywhere nearby, whatever Briala had said. He was a rabble-rouser, the foremost amongst those loudly proclaiming that the empress and her faction were weak elf-lovers for letting Enasan exist as long as they had, who said it should be wiped off the face of Thedas if there was any justice in this world. He’d gotten louder in the last year. Ellana wondered if she would finally be allowed to punch him now that she wasn’t ambassador anymore.

When they moved to the great dining room, Duke Legrand took up the toast that the empress should have given. He was one of her most senior nobles, a member of the Council of Heralds, and one of the only original supporters of Celene’s decision to allow elves into the University of Orlais. Ellana sat to his left - and Absolon Valmont, Celene’s presumptive heir, a distant cousin, someone they’d had to go digging through the family tree to find, sat to his right. Absolon looked young and attractive and attentive through Legrand’s speech, with his lion-emblazoned mask (even if he didn’t truly deserve the heraldry - he was some offshoot of a bastard, just enough royal blood in him to pass muster). Ellana wondered what Ilriane had been doing to check up on the other members of the Council of Heralds, to see how they felt about their future emperor. He checked so many of their boxes - a devout Andrastian, a good enough player in the Game, related to both Celene and Gaspard for those who still cared now that Gaspard was in the ground, too…

Legrand spoke about the long and fruitful relationship between Enasan and Orlais, about Andraste’s promise of the Dales to the elves and how Orlais was right to make good on that promise (never mind that they wouldn’t give back to the Dales, that Enasan crouched on a quarter of the land that the Chant of Light claimed their prophet promised the elves). Ellana wished the girdle under her dress wasn’t so tight. She wondered how close Ashara and her companions were - they’d rerouted and were taking longer to get back to Enasan - hopefully Ashara would stay home long enough to see Ellana when she returned from this trip - she wondered what Solas was doing, back home in Enasan - and despite her absent-mindedness, when Etienne de Pelletier burst into the room, her heart still sank.

“Comte de Pelletier,” Briala said. She was closest to him. “Your manners have not improved, I see.”

“You will all forgive the intrusion when you hear the news I bear.” He pitched his voice so that everyone could hear. “There has been an incident at the border town of Clermont.”

The name rippled through the crowd. Ellana recognized it but only vaguely. A town where you could cross the border, yes - not an important one. What happened?

“A horrific massacre that I tremble to share with you today. A pack of elven criminals, under the banner of Vir’anor, a group sanctioned by the very government this so-called Ambassador Tabris represents, were lawfully stopped by loyal Orlesian soldiers while trying to cross into Enasan with false papers.”

Vir’anor?

“Instead of allowing the rule of law to guide them - they attacked those good Orlesian soldiers. And all of those good Orlesian soldiers - every last one of them - died in that fight.”

 _Ashara_. Where was Clermont? Where was Ashara’s new route?

Ellana’s body was numb. She could only feel the pain in her hand where she gripped the chair hard.

There were other groups working for Vir’anor that traveled through Orlais. It could be -

“And do you wish to know how they died? Because these representatives of Enasan had in their number a blood mage who rained fire from the sky on every last one of them, burning them alive, until all that was left was ashes.”

It couldn’t be her.

“And that blood mage was named Ashara Lavellan.”

The nobles around her played their parts, gasped and cried out and even fainted as if they were reading a script. But this wasn’t a dining room anymore. Ellana knew that in her bones. It was a battlefield now. She rose from her chair, as though she was coming out of cover. She itched for a weapon but all she had was her dress and her words.

“That is not possible. My daughter is not a blood mage.”

 _What happened to her? Is my daughter alive?_ She wanted to scream.

“I have the word of twenty good Orlesian citizens who saw otherwise. Twenty good Orlesian citizens who saw her escape the scene of the crime. I demand that she be brought to justice at once. The crown must act, or forever prove that it values the lives of knife-eared savages more than the lives of Orlesian citizens.”

There was a roaring in the dining room. There had to be. It couldn’t be only in her ears. _Ashara, Ashara running terrified from Orlesian soldiers, Ashara, what will they do to her if they catch her?_

“You have no proof of these accusations.” She was on her feet, dimly aware that Ilriane Tabris was staring at her with terrified hazel eyes.

“Then you deny that this is your knife? That it is not stained with your daughter’s blood?” De Pelletier produced the knife from his pocket with a flourish, held it high, turned in a slow circle. It was hers. The one she gave to Ashara when she first started her work with Vir’anor. _These fucking Orlesians, their theatrics, tell me where my daughter is -_

“If your men have already been to the scene of the crime, produce these false papers,” she said instead.

“And why, Madame Lavellan, do you think your daughter used fire to hide her crimes? The papers are so much ash now. Just like the men and women she murdered.”

“Comte de Pelletier - esteemed friends - this is not the place for this discussion.” Ilriane’s voice was loud enough to carry, firm enough to command, gentle enough not to intimidate. Ellana realized how loud she’d been. That her hand was still a fist. “This is worrying news indeed. Please, let us withdraw somewhere to discuss the matter so that the others may continue to enjoy the celebration of all that is good about the relationship between our two beloved countries.”

De Pelletier bowed graciously - keeping the knife aloft - and yielded. Of course he did. He got what he wanted. She gave him what he wanted.

_My daughter. Where is my daughter?_

Ellana followed them when they withdrew - Absolon, Ilriane, the Comte - ignoring the murmurs. Until they were near the door, and the Comte turned, and said:

“Madame Lavellan - is it truly your place to enter into these discussions?”

 _You’ve hurt my daughter you filthy, lying_ -

“Madame Lavellan.” Ilriane now. “Please. Let your ladies take you to your room. You need to recover from your fright.”

Fright. It wasn’t fright. It was an ancient anger, a mother’s righteous fury.

They moved into the next room, and the door clicked shut behind them, and Ellana was left alone on the other side.

Ellana let herself be led away after that, the elves of Ilriane’s staff forming a quiet perimeter around her. Right until the moment she saw Briala in the nearby shadows. Then she crossed to her at once, halting her escort with a flick of her hand.

“Do you have agents near Clermont? People you trust? People who could be discreet?” Ellana asked, her voice harsh and low.

“You want me to send my own men after your blood mage daughter?” Briala’s voice was dry. Nearly sarcastic.

“She’s not a blood mage.”

“And yet you recovered so quickly from your mysterious illness, only after your daughter spent several months in Tevinter - and after such strange reports came in from my agents in Enasan about what is happening with the Veil there.”

Ellana wanted to shout at her. She wanted to shake her by the shoulders. _Fuck the Veil. My daughter is out there_ -

She remembered Vianne’s smile, full of life. The skip in her step.

“I don’t know what you are thinking, Briala, but none of it is true.” Ellana stopped hiding the shake in her voice. “Imagine it was your Vianne out there terrified and hunted and alone. Would you trust that man’s guards to find her? Celene’s? To treat her well when they did?”

Briala stiffened. Her lips thinned. Her eyes darted back towards the door that led into the dining room. Ellana pushed again.

“Briala, I am asking you as a mother. Send your men.”

She thought about mentioning the political benefits, the possibility for leverage, the fact that de Pelletier had to be lying - but she saw it in Briala’s eyes. The moment she gave in.

“Very well. I will send them. Go to your room. Seek out your husband in dreams, however it is that you two meet. See what he knows.”

“I will. Don’t hesitate to wake me with news.”

Ellana had turned to go when Briala spoke again.

“This is not good, Lavellan. Pieces are moving even now. We should have seen something like this coming.”

Ellana thought of the months she’d taken recovering. First at Skyhold and then at Dorian and Bull’s villa. Enjoying her family, enjoying her friends, enjoying each deep breath without the searing pain in her back, distant from all the concerns of this forsaken Winter Palace. Enjoying something like the life she wanted before misleading portraits and dresses that spoke for her and gilded masks. Was this the price?

“Find my daughter,” she said, and went to her room.

Once she was there she dismissed her attendants and fought her way out of the dress on her own, and then the girdle, until she was sweating. That was calming. She wrapped her hair. _My daughter. They went after my daughter. How?_ She slammed her fist on the elegant bureau just to hear all the delicate glass jars rattle as they fell.

_Everything I have done. Everything I have sacrificed._

Ellana could not, contrary to what Briala said, find Solas in her dreams. All she could do was take medicine to help her sleep through the sight of the blood on the knife, the image of Ashara hunted down by chevaliers, by templars, beaten smited _dead_ \- and then hope. Solas did not always come to her. But he had to, he had to, he had to tonight...

She did not remember what she dreamt before he appeared, but it must have been a nightmare. He was frowning, already reaching for her, holding her to his chest. His warm, broad, safe, chest. Her home for twenty-five years.

“Ma’lath - the party cannot have gone so badly.”

She lived for one more moment in the world where he did not know, and then spoke.

“Ashara,” she said. “Tell me you have sensed her in the Fade tonight.”

“I have not. Vhenan, you’re shaking.”

She told him.

Ellana was no mage, but she felt the Fade roil with his rage.

“If she did use blood magic - use something she may have learned from Falon’Din - I will not be able to find her in the Fade. Maybe not for days. We must rely on Briala’s agents. We must send agents of our own from Enasan. We will find her. We will protect her. And if they have touched her - if they have hurt her in any way -”

He’d pulled away. She didn’t have the strength to reach for him.

“They will seen us burn for this,” she said.

Solas stood tall and angry and commanding before her.

“They will burn first."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooooh boy. Mamae and Papae aren’t happy.
> 
> Fun fact for those who don't know: [in my AU](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9921326/chapters/27286764), Vianne is actually married to Solas and Ellana’s younger daughter Saeris, who does not exist in this timeline. I had fun seeing a younger version of her here.
> 
> Prompts, suggestions, comments and general discussion more than welcome here or on my [Tumblr](https://buttsonthebeach.tumblr.com/)!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick note: there is a very brief description of a dead body towards the end of this chapter. It's not lengthy or detailed, but if you are particularly susceptible, be alert in the final section. It's very obvious when it is coming, and, like I said, very short. I just like to be cautious so no one ends up unpleasantly surprised.

Report after report came in about Ashara.

She was an abomination stalking the road through the Deauvin flats. An avatar of fire and death.

She had a band of rebel elves with her.

This was a sanctioned operation by Vir’anor - by Ambassador Tabris - by Briala.

Men of the court put on armor they hadn’t worn in years and muttered about younger brothers given to the Chantry who were neutered now, no lyrium to help them fight monsters like that knife-eared murderer, Divine Victoria ought never have restricted the numbers of true templars so much...

Cassandra sent word swiftly of course. Addressed personally to Ellana.

 

_We will find out what happened. But you know who I have to send after her, old friend. They will have the strictest orders not to harm her. I swear it._

 

Templars. And not the neutered kind. Templars combing the countryside for her daughter.

Solas still could not find her. He asked spirits if they had sensed her but he said even the Fade was a riot in Orlais. Violence and death and anger in so many places that the spirits he did meet, he did not trust. He wanted to come in person instead. He wanted to find her himself.

“You would only make things worse,” Ellana told him. “They would take your presence and draw every terrible conclusion from it they could. And what if she comes home? She needs one of us there.”

She could see the muscle in his jaw work through his frustration. “I know.”

She knew they kissed in the Fade, that he held her tight before leaving her to continue searching, but she couldn’t remember the sensation when she woke alone in her too-big, too-soft bed in the palace. Her shoulders were tense. She alternated between trying to picture what happened and remembering Ashara as a little girl, a mop of curls and smelling of plain soap, warm and safe on her lap, demanding that she read a story to her for the third time.

Briala’s agents reported back with the first real news two days after Comte de Pelletier’s announcement. Briala brought the news personally to her room that evening. She declined Ellana’s offer of brandy when she took her seat in the armchair across from her. Ellana poured herself a little more instead.

“De Pelletier is not wrong,” Briala said. “There was a terrible fight. The battlefield is devastated, even days later. A smoking ruin.”

Ellana remembered the first tiny flame Ashara ever conjured, right in the palm of her hand, standing in the hallway of their home and shrieking with delight. _See, see, see, like Papae said!_

“And there is no sign of the papers. All of the bodies are gone now - burned to ash, or disposed of by the remaining soldiers.”

“How many were there? Clermont is not a large border crossing. There should only have been a handful on duty.” Ellana had done what research she could, of course. Mostly racking her brain and grilling Ilriane for what she could not remember on her own (Ilriane, who was the one who suggested Ellana keep mostly to her quarters since she had no official standing at court anymore, Ilriane who was trying to smile her way through this crisis).

“You are correct - and yet the townsfolk my agents spoke with said they saw soldiers come from the other side of the field - the side closest to Enasan - after the battle began. At least a dozen more than the five or six that should have been on duty.”

“Did they have any idea why the Orlesians attacked?”

It was late. Briala did not have her mask on. There was no missing the flash of irritation in her expression. Ellana didn’t care. It was the only explanation, and she knew it in her bones. Ashara would not hurt someone without a good reason.

“No. Clermont is a backwater place. They have little love for elves or mages there. They held to the same story that de Pelletier shared. The elves that passed through their town were dangerous, and they were stopped rightfully, and then your daughter killed as many of their men as she could using blood magic.”

Ellana was wearing a long enough sleeve that Briala would not be able to see the two neat, horizontal scar across her forearm. The places where Solas had cut her when he performed the blood magic ritual that saved her life. Ashara had a matching scar on her arm. And she had the nightmares - her last gift from Falon’Din, along with the lingering memories he left behind, including rituals and spells Ashara hesitated to speak of.

“My daughter is no blood mage,” Ellana said.

Briala thinned her lips. “So you continue to say.”

“Was there anything else unusual? Anything about the guards stationed there? About the soldiers who appeared from the other side of the field?”

“There is only one lead that shows promise at the moment. The captain on duty the day of the incident - Nathalie Calvet - she was a former templar from the Gallows. Her name is ringing several - unpleasant bells, as we investigate her.”

“Unpleasant how?”

“She was not the sort who shyed at the things Meredith did. She did not like that Divine Victoria rolled back so much templar control of the mages, that the Circles are not what they were. She was one of those that Divine Victoria’s Seekers investigated and removed from the templar order, in fact. Apparently she had given other mages passing through Clermont difficulties before.”

Ellana had already lost track of the number of times she’d tried to imagine what happened in that field. She tried one more time. A bitter ex-templar, a human, harassing them - would that have been enough to provoke Ashara to such violence?

“Of all the luck,” Ellana said finally. “They weren’t even supposed to be in Clermont.”

“No?” Briala leaned forward. Of course - she hadn’t known that before.

“No. They always go through Lourmarin. There was a sudden spike in tolls along their route, or something like that - they had to take a longer route and ended up in Clermont instead.”

“Tell me the route they were meant to take originally. I will see what could have happened.”

As Ellana told her the route they usually took, the back of her mind worked. If Ashara did use blood magic - what would have provoked her?

“Find out if she was using lyrium,” Ellana said when there was a pause. “The captain. Calvet.”

Briala leaned back in her chair.

“You are thinking she could have smited your daughter.”

“Yes. And maybe she was just buying lyrium in back alleys - but if there was someone buying it for her - someone who wanted an incident like this…”

Briala nodded slowly. “Are you still offering the brandy?”

Ellana poured it, trying to focus as she often did on the simplicity of the action to ground herself. The weight of the crystal decanter. Its coolness. The amber color of the brandy as it poured. Legrand sent it over. She was not without friends.

“You know, there is a chance the story ends here,” Briala said after her first sip. “Just a bitter templar who pushed your daughter too far.”

“Yes. But you don’t think that’s true.”

For the first time in years, Briala smiled at Ellana. It was not a happy smile. But it was a smile nonetheless.

“No. I don’t.”

Ellana and Briala did not work together often - but when they did, Ellana had moments like this. Moments where she wondered if they might have been friends, the two of them, in some other life where they did not meet because of daggers and masks and lies. If Ellana had not been forced to treat Briala - her hopes, her desires, her mistakes - as a pawn from the beginning.

“Thank you for helping me with this,” Ellana said.

“Do not flatter yourself. Whatever is going on here impacts what I have built in Orlais.” Briala drained the last of her brandy and stood. “If it turns out that this was not a mistake - that your daughter was at fault - I would not hesitate to turn her over myself.”

Ellana felt the absurd protective rush she always felt when Ashara was small and learning to walk and stumbled over an uneven floorboard or forgotten toy. She bit it back.

“Thank you anyway.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Briala shook her head. “Good night.”

Ellana finished her own brandy. Capped the decanter. Tried to stretch out the tension in her neck and shoulders and back. Laid down and tried to sleep. Hoped desperately once again that when she met Solas that night, he would have news. But when he found her in the Fade that night, all he did was shake his head.

“I don’t know where she is.”

*

The next day when there was a knock at her door, Ellana expected to see Briala again, or maybe Ilriane, or Legrand, but instead it was a young human courtier she didn’t recognize.

“Madame,” he said with a quick bow. “Marquise Briala sent me. Would you like to come take a walk through the gardens?”

Ellana hesitated. She had not appeared at an official function since de Pelletier’s revelation. She didn’t know what she would do if she saw the man himself. Well, she knew what she would want to do. Put her hand around his throat and demand an answer. She had the strength in her to avoid doing that. She was not a hot-blooded child in the woods anymore.

“Allow me to change, Messere - ?”

“Renard Villiers, at your service.”

Ellana recognized the last name at once. A minor house. She remembered a Jean-Claude as the head of that household - his father? They’d never been major players in the game. They were only one level above merchants in the eyes of the great houses - a good portion of their income still came from trade in the bloodstone they mined from their holdings in the Dales. They’d undertaken a contract with Enasan once, if she remembered correctly, early on in the days of the country, when they were first outfitting their own defensive forces. And Briala had sent him - so was he someone she could trust?

Likely not.

“I take it your father is the Viscount Jean-Claude Villiers?” Ellana asked when she emerged, dressed suitably in far simpler attire than her dress for the salon.

“He was, madame. He died last year, and I am now Viscount Villiers - though it is still a strange thing to say.”

“I am sorry for your loss.”

“I am sorry for what you must have endured these last few days.” He dropped his voice to say it. They were in a public hall now, making their way towards the gardens. That was a gesture on his part. To say it here, in public, even quietly.

“That is kind of you. Tell me - are we meeting the marquise, or does she have a message?” It was still strange now and then to call Briala marquise. She’d only won the title a few years before. Part of the long, long game she’d been playing, stretching back all the way to the civil war. She’d refused their invitation to immigrate to Enasan when the republic was first founded. She wanted to stay here in Orlais, to continue helping the elves who toiled in alienages and wore servants’ masks. She didn’t want a “Dalish solution” as she’d put it.

“She is busy at the moment, I am afraid. She sent me to show you something instead. Here.” Villiers opened the door to the garden and bowed to let her pass. Another gesture, more public than the last. The nobles that went quiet when they passed saw the deference he showed her. He was taking a side. Fuck, she hated the endless calculations of the Orlesian court.

Villiers took her behind the marble balustrade instead of out into the garden itself, and then he casually leaned against one of the marble columns.

“Do you see that man there?”

“I do. Comte Bayard.”

“There are two interesting things that the marquise and I noticed about our dear Comte. One, he has several holdings along the road that runs south from Halamshiral to Lourmarin - the very road where tolls were suddenly raised in Celene’s name. Two, he has a younger sister who was given to the Chantry at a young age - Mother Angèle - a sister with strong business sense, who was placed in charge of lyrium shipments and distribution in southern Orlais years ago. An office she no longer holds for unrelated reasons, but it is interesting, non?”

“Very interesting. Would he have had authority to raise those tolls?”

“Theoretically. We are trying to determine if Celene gave him authority, or if he lied. Things are - complicated, given her health. It is entirely possible that someone could have forged her signature on such an order. Several of her ladies have been signing decrees and letters in her name, and with her consent.”

“Is that where the marquise is now? With Celene?”

“I believe so.”

There was a bit of a stir, and people parting - de Pelletier had entered the garden, puffed up, proud, and menacing. He didn’t pause to talk to anyone but he made sure he was seen. His mask was more ornate than the one he’d worn at the salon. Bits of armor gleamed on his person - greaves, and a single gauntlet. Nothing functional, but it was a statement. Several of the men with him had the unmistakable yellow feathers of chevaliers as part of their finery. Ellana was reminded of young, cocky warriors prowling the edge of a clan’s territory, on the lookout for humans who dared to venture too close. Ellana shifted just enough that she was fully in shadow, that Villiers’ profile would continue to conceal her.

De Pelletier spoke a word or two to several people on his turn about the garden before he went back - including Bayard.

“He was of course who we suspected before this,” Villiers said when the comte was gone. “But now it would seem that we may have the beginnings of something like proof.”

Ellana remembered Briala’s words the day of the salon. De Pelletier had initially declined the invitation. She could only imagine he’d said something nasty about elves in the process. Then, suddenly, he changed his mind, and said he would attend after all. Then he appeared at the most theatrical moment possible to reveal what he had done. It made sense.

“Have you been involved in the Game for long, Messere Villiers?”

“Long enough. Not so long as someone of your stature and experience, of course.”

“Well, you’ve clearly already learned the part about flattery,” Ellana said with a snort. “What does de Pelletier gain from this in your opinion?”

“Power, naturally. He was always of Gaspard’s mindset - that Orlais has been waning, that it needs to return to its old days of glory. That it needs the sword. The target might have been Ferelden once. But now he has a target that is even closer, even easier.”

Fear knotted in her chest. Her daughter was that target. Her country. Her people. Everything she worked for, for decades. They knew it would be a challenge when Celene passed. But they thought they had more time to groom Absolon Valmont into a more suitable replacement. He was here in the garden too, of course, but he didn’t draw the eye the way de Pelletier did, didn’t command the imagination. She always thought they had more time, that she would be grateful when she finally stepped down, when none of this was her problem anymore, but now, now, now -

“I take it you’re already searching for more evidence to connect all of this? Bayard and his sister, de Pelletier - my daughter?”

“Of course. I have left myself entirely at the marquise’s disposal.”

Ellana looked at the young man and asked herself the same question she’d just asked him - _what does he gain from this?_ Most likely, the same thing as de Pelletier. Power.

“That’s kind of you. Not many would champion the cause of an elf. I take it that anything the three of us discuss remains entirely with you?”

“Naturally, madame. The first rule of the game I learned was to talk less and smile more.” He flashed her a smile in demonstration. A smile like a cat’s. It didn’t make her trust him.

Ellana found Ilriane Tabris in the small suite of rooms where the diplomatic envoy from Enasan stayed. She was in a sitting room, occupied with several Orlesian visitors, or so her aides said. Ellana took a seat outside. She wanted to go straight in. She forced herself to remember that the Orlesians Ilriane was meeting were important, that she and her news were not somehow more important. She wondered if Solas had managed to find Ashara yet. How long did it take the two of them to recover their connection to the Fade after the ritual that saved her life?

“Tarlan,” Ilriane said when she emerged from the sitting room some time later. She recovered from her slip into Elvhen quickly. “Madame Lavellan - I hope you have not waited long.” Then, to the six Orlesian with her. “Once more, I offer my deepest sympathies for your loss. If there is anything further I can do, you have only to ask.”

Apologies for their loss?

The nearest Orlesian looked at her with unmistakable disgust. Said something Ellana did not catch in Orlesian. Ilriane lowered her eyes, and then bowed with one hand over her heart, and replied in Orlesian. Ellana caught some of that. _Je suis désolé_ and then _sa_ _fille_. The Orlesians exchanged glances, and then left.

“My lady,” Ilriane said when they were gone, switching at once to Elvhen. “I thought you were going to stay in your quarters.”

Ellana was already tired. She wanted her daughter. She wanted her bondmate. She wanted a stiff drink. She didn’t want to speak Elvhen. But it was a point of honor with younger elves and she _could_ speak it, even if the words came slowly sometimes, and she had never shaken the Dalish accent that colored her words.

“I received an invitation I could not refuse from a potential friend - Briala and her quickling ally, Renard Villiers.”

“You are continuing to meet with Briala?”

“She has valuable information.”

Ilriane looked frustrated, the way she often had when Ellana would tell her to rewrite a letter or come up with yet another potential course of action. “You should have sent her to me.”

Ellana ignored her. “You were meeting with Orlesians. I had some free time. Who were they?”

Ilriane lowered her eyes. “Families of three of the victims from Clermont.”

“And you were apologizing. And seeing me…”

Ellana began to piece together the Orlesian words she’d heard. _I’m sorry_ and _her_ _daughter._

“Yes. They asked if you would apologize. I said you were struggling greatly with the events surrounding your daughter, that an apology was not in your power now.”

“You were soothing them before.”

“Yes, my lady.”

Ellana’s first reaction was hot rage. Apologizing to them, when their children were the ones who took up arms against Ashara, who would have laughed to see her dead. They didn’t deserve apologies. She steeled herself against that reaction. It served no one. Had she not written apologies to angry nobles who believed they had done nothing wrong? Smiled at men and women who called her the Dread Wolf’s whore? This was Ilriane’s job. The job she had trained her for. She switched back to Trade when she spoke again.

“Briala and her ally believe they may soon be able to link de Pelletier to this. The Vir’anor group that was killed may have been forced to pass through Clermont by a sudden spike in tolls, and a former templar may have smited my daughter in an attempt to kill her or provoke her - and both of these connect to Comte Bayard, a friend and associate of de Pelletier’s. We are waiting for confirmation.”

Ilriane nodded. She was worrying the ring on her hand - the official seal of her office - twisting it on and off.

“Thank you, tarlan. Would you - could you ensure that Briala and her allies bring the reports to me instead?”

Ellana hesitated.

“You have so much else to attend to. Briala and I have worked together for years and years.”

“True. But you are a private citizen of Enasan now. And this must be so hard on you, with your own child involved…”

Ilriane was treating this like another meeting. Mincing words and trying to soothe tempers. She was talking like Ellana was a child, like she had not capably worn the very ring that Ilriane twisted and twisted now, like she had not helped form Enasan from nothing. Like she couldn’t be trusted now, just because it was her daughter out there, her daughter she wanted to protect. Like she hadn’t protected all of them time and time again.

“I thank you for your concern, Ilriane. I will ensure that we continue to communicate. I am sure you have many more families to apologize to before we have the whole story of what happened.”

It was unfair of her to say and she knew it, but she left before Ilriane could reply. She was not going to sit idly by.

There was a letter from Leliana waiting for her in her room. She was not so active in her labyrinth of secrets anymore but she said she would reach out to anyone she could in search of more information, that those responsible would not go unpunished. If things went on much longer she would do her best to make the journey to Halamshiral herself. Ellana selfishly wanted her there and yet also hoped it didn’t come to that. Leliana deserved what peace she had found.

Then, of course, came her call from Dorian that night.

“Ellana.” His voice came urgently from the crystal at her bedside. She had not been wearing it when she went out of the room, of course - it wouldn’t do to have the symbol of her friendship with a Tevinter magister dangling around her neck while walking the halls of Orlesian power. “Ellana, are you actually there this time?”

“Yes,” she said, disentangling herself from her covers. “Sorry. I was out for a good part of today. What is it?”

“What is it? What it _is_ is that I had to walk into the Magisterium today for an emergency session and find out that it was called because of an incident between Orlais and Enasan, and that Ashara was involved. I can’t believe you didn’t call me. Is she alright?”

Ellana took a steadying breath and dug her nails into her palm.

“I don’t know. She escaped the scene of the incident. No one has been able to find her. Not the Orlesians, not Solas. It’s - it isn’t good, Dorian.”

“Maker. No, it isn’t. But I have faith in your girl. She’ll turn up okay. Is it true that she used blood magic on the soldiers?”

There was a pause. Ellana dug her fingers into her palm harder. Dorian knew what Solas and Ashara and Lucius and Claudia did to save her life - more or less. He knew Ashara knew at least a little blood magic from that. But they’d never told him the whole truth. Not about the orb they’d taken twenty-two years ago, or exactly what happened in that temple in Oruvun. Because his life’s work was in service of Tevinter, and however much he loved them - she couldn’t put him in the position of knowing such dangerous things.

“I can’t imagine where she would have learned blood magic,” Ellana said. Walls had ears here. Dorian would understand. “But you should know that they are saying she learned it from you, or someone else in Tevinter.”

“Naturally.” Dorian sighed. “I take it you’re tracking every possible lead now. Is there anything I can do?”

“I don’t think so, lethallin.” Again, Ellana selfishly wanted him there. He would stay up all night at her side, comb through paper after paper, lead after lead, or he would just open a bottle of wine and distract her with story after story. He would share her pain, even if it was without words. She would never forget the smile that lit up his face when he held Ashara the first time, the day she was born.

“Bull will be here tomorrow. I’ll try and call again so he can share his thoughts. I know sometimes it is - easier - to talk about such politics with him than it is with me.”

“I will.”

“And the instant you hear anything about Ash - you’ll call us, won’t you?”

Ellana was startled by the new voice. Claudia, Dorian’s apprentice. Ashara’s dear friend. Her usually calm and even tone was worried.

“Of course, Claudia. I will.”

“I should find Lucius,” Claudia said, her voice more indistinct now. She was probably talking more to Dorian or herself. “He’ll hear one way or another as news spreads.”

Josephine always talked about staying in control of the story during their time in the Inquisition. Bad news could get out, as long as what got out, and when, and to whom, was within their control. This story was already on the far side of Thedas. What was Ilriane and her staff doing to control it? Ellana hadn’t even thought about that.

“We’ll speak again soon,” Ellana said. “As soon as I have news.”

She couldn’t sleep again that night. She needed to drink one of the sleeping tonics she kept on hand. And then, again, there was Solas, a stormcloud of fear, a relief because he was her bondmate and the only other person who truly knew the fear that beat like a drum inside her head every moment that Ashara was missing, and yet not a relief, because he was someone else she wanted to care for and protect, and he was in pain.

“Still?” she asked.

“Still,” he said. “Do you have any leads?”

He paced, slowly, while she told him. “I can’t find Ashara, but I can find them. De Pelletier. Bayard. His sister. I can comb through their minds and find the truth of -”

“ _No_.”

“And why not? They threaten everything we have ever fought for. They threaten our child, Ellana.”

“Do you think I somehow don’t know that? But if they even _suspect_ that you have tampered with their minds we will have no ground to stand on. They will demonize you, they will demonize us, they will demonize our entire race. And even if they don’t suspect, how will we prove anything you discover is true without tipping our hand?”

Solas continued pacing while she spoke, his face darkening, until he let his frustration go with a crack of arcane energy that made all the sights around them flicker. His broad shoulders were tense, his eyes glowing blue. He was not her quiet, gentle mate. He was Fen’Harel. She reached out and put her hand on his chest. She couldn’t quite feel him, not the way she did in waking, but after a moment he covered her hand with his own and squeezed, and directed his attention to that point of contact so that it felt as solid and real as it could. His posture softened. The glow died from his eyes.

“I will try to find a memory,” he said. “Something that shows the guard captain taking lyrium, or something that shows de Pelletier and Bayard meeting. Anything. Something you could subtly direct someone to find in waking.”

“Good.”

Ellana wasn’t sure if anything else happened after that. It was the last thing she remembered on waking though. Their hands clasped and the Fade shivering with rage and fear around them.

*

Ellana hoped for Leliana, for Cassandra, for Dorian, for Solas to appear at her side. Instead, it was Vivienne who arrived at Halamshiral five days after the incident in Clermont.

Ellana wanted to be relieved. Vivienne had never been her friend - not really - but she was someone Ellana fought and bled beside. Someone who had given her good advice. Someone she respected. Someone who respected her.

But she was also the Grand Enchanter of the Chantry’s remaining Circles, and there was only one reason she was in Halamshiral. There was blood in the water.

The day before the news had come - Bayard’s sister Mother Angèle had submitted a petition saying that there had been issues with mages at border crossings into Enasan, saying that templars should be stationed at each of them. It had been denied. And yet, somehow, there was some lyrium unaccounted for in a recent delivery to that part of Orlais. And an investigation into Captain Nathalie Calvet’s quarters revealed the very implements she would need to take the lyrium, fairly new ones, and in good working order. Briala’s agents were the ones to uncover it, of course, and Renard Villiers and Legrand were the ones to spread the news. The two men did it carefully, of course, no direct accusations, but Bayard and de Pelletier had been seen together often enough that the rumors started to swirl. That was what they wanted. The Orlesian court needed to turn on itself, no influence from the elves of Orlais or of Enasan detected.

Now, amidst the voices crying out against the evils of elves and unchecked mages, there were those crying foul against the old abuses of templars, calling out for Divine Victoria to make an official statement about what happened, to investigate Mother Angèle. De Pelletier was doubling down, calling this a plot by Enasan, calling for Empress Celene to rise from her sickbed and banish the diplomatic team from Enasan, to begin raising troops. Absolon Valmont tried to fill her void with pretty speeches that Briala and Legrand helped him write. It wasn’t working.

Celene, for her part, only grew sicker.

The members of the Council of Heralds who were not already in Halamshiral when this all began arrived.

Ilriane looked ragged every time Ellana saw her.

And of course, that meant that Vivienne would appear now.

“How are you, my dear?” Vivienne said when Ellana arrived in her chambers that evening. She gave the same embrace she always did. Gentle, formal, no real contact of their bodies except for the brief press of their cheeks.

“As well as you can imagine when my daughter is missing.”

“It is a tragedy to be sure. The devastation the witnesses describe. Simply awful. That is the power of one determined mage…”

So there wasn’t going to be any sympathy between them.

“The power of a desperate, frightened girl. A mage who was pushed to desperation by a templar who automatically saw her as a threat.”

“And did she do anything to prove her wrong?”

Ellana grit her teeth.

“You’re right. I suppose she should have just laid down and died instead.”

Vivienne smiled. “You always did have a spine of steel. Let us talk, then. How are things going here in Halamshiral?”

“You ask me as if I am your first meeting of the day. I know you met with de Pelletier, with Absolon Valmont, and with Comte Legrand before coming to me.”

“Naturally, and I asked them the same question. I want to know what you think of the situation here.”

Vivienne had lost none of her grace. She reclined with ease in her chair, like none of this phased her. But her gaze was still sharp, no matter how many fine, fine lines creased the skin around her eyes.

“I think de Pelletier is making a play for the throne of Orlais, and that he intends to gather power and support by rallying people against elves and mages. I think he would see us all return to the Orlais Gaspard wanted. The Orlais before Celene’s reign or the Inquisition, or Enasan.”

“I agree completely. He is not the man I would see on the throne. What would you see happen here instead?”

“I would see the future I thought we had a week ago. Absolon Valmont on the throne, Enasan and Orlais at peace. My daughter safe at home. We are innocent of all of this. That is the only just resolution. Surely you see that.”

Vivienne stopped slouching. She sat up straight in her chair, laid a finger alongside her chin, and studied Ellana’s face. Then she rose, and walked over to the small table nearby, her robes flowing around her. She poured a glass of water, and sipped it slowly before speaking.

“You know my dear, I had not thought I would ever see you again when I couldn’t come to the wedding. I am pleased to see you here, and to see you well. I had thought the nature of your - illness - to be quite insurmountable. Yet here you are, able to propose this alliance. Tell me, what was your Solas able to do to cure you at last, when all hope was lost?”

Ellana felt the first spike of fear down her spine.

“He and Ashara found a very old spell. A ritual that could cleanse powerful enchantments. It was enough to undo what had been done.”

“What kind of ritual?”

“You know I’m not a mage.”

“No - but I also know you spent hours in Skyhold’s library with Dorian and Solas and Fiona and myself learning as much as you could. I used to quiz you on the difference between creative and entropic spells - on the signs of blood magic. I’m sure you couldn’t tell me how the spell was done precisely - but don’t try to play the fool, either.”

She was right. Those days were the first foundations of their relationship, whatever it was. Not friends, not partners, maybe not even allies. Just people who respected each other, even when they disagreed. Ellana couldn’t keep trying to lie.

“How I got well has nothing to do with any of this.”

“But it does.” Vivienne put down the glass and came closer once more. She was a tall woman - much taller than Ellana herself - and now she towered over her where she sat. “Twenty years ago you pardoned a war criminal and used the threat of his power to carve off a chunk of the Orlesian empire for the sake of your people. You have maintained it carefully through a deft mixture of assurances that your people are no threat to us - and by warning us of the very opposite when you’ve had to. The man you call husband is a weapon, one that nearly destroyed Thedas, and your miraculous recovery only reminds us of that.”

Ellana took a breath, and dove.

“What do you want, Grand Enchanter?”

Vivienne circled to the other side of the table and sat once again. They were as close to eye to eye as they would get.

“I want what I have always wanted, my dear: balance. Stability. What is right. But above all, I want the truth. I want to know how much power your Dread Wolf has, and what he has done with it to protect the things he loves, before I decide who is truly innocent in this situation.”

Ellana shook her head and looked away. It was a sign of weakness. She knew it. Vivienne was always the one reminding her of that. What was there to say? She’d always known what it looked like from the outside. Selfish Inquisitor Lavellan, pardoning the Dread Wolf because she was besotted, using the threat of his power to cow the Orlesians into submission, bearing his bastard brat. They had broken the law. But none of it - none of it was supposed to harm anyone. None of what they had done deserved _this_ \- this web of lies and danger drawing tighter and tighter.

“I did warn you, Ellana, all those years ago here in this palace. I warned you how dangerous this kind of love is. Did you really think there would never be a price for sparing his life? That people would not question your judgment until the day you died? That they would not watch the Veil carefully - particularly in Enasan? You are not innocent in this conflict. Not any more than de Pelletier is.”

Ellana looked her in the eye once more.

“We have done nothing that would endanger Thedas, Vivienne. Nothing.”

But sometimes at night she came awake from visions of Falon’Din’s glowing gaze, shining out of her own daughter’s face.

“I am confident that you believe that. That does not make it true.”

This time, Ellana held her gaze steady. She had nothing to hide. She would stand beside the decisions they’d made. She had nothing to fear. She didn’t. She needed Vivienne to believe that, if she wanted her help. Never mind the sick twisting feeling in her gut.

“I will join you in your attempt to stop this de Pelletier from seizing the throne,” Vivienne said finally. “But it is only because I believe he is not the man that would bring stability to Orlais. He would bring only the blade. But I will warn you - I would not see your puppet Absolon Valmont on the throne, either. And I do not believe you when you say that you and your Dread Wolf have done nothing to endanger Thedas - and if I do find something that proves my suspicions correct, old friend…”

Ellana did not flinch or look away.

“I understand, Vivienne.”

She felt like she was spinning during the walk back to her bedroom, or maybe like she was unraveling, or like the world was unraveling around her. So many eyes on her, and no one offering a helping hand that didn’t come with a knife in the other. She sat on her bed in a daze. She hadn’t meant for any of this. She’d never acted with ill intent. She just wanted her daughter back in her arms. Her people safe in their home, their birthright restored, and the rest of Thedas unaffected. She’d done good all her life. She had. That good wouldn’t turn on her now.

“Anything?” She asked Solas when he appeared.

“Nothing,” he said, soft, defeated.

*

The next morning de Pelletier’s men paraded into the Winter Palace carrying Ashara’s body.

Villiers was the one who came and told her about it.

“I caught a glimpse,” he said. “It was a female elf. Young. Dark haired and dark-skinned - well, not as dark as you. But - there was no one in the hall at the time who knows your daughter well enough to say for sure that the body was hers.”

Ellana couldn’t breathe. All the air had left the room. Villiers’ voice was a distant sound.

“Madame? Madame Lavellan?”

_My daughter, my child. It can’t be her. I would have known. The sun would have fallen from the sky if she was dead. I would have known. It can’t be her._

“Leave us.”

It was Vivienne’s voice.

Vivienne’s hands holding her up when her knees buckled.

“Ellana, you need to stand. You need to take a deep breath. You need to dress yourself, and you need to come with me. Ellana.”

She managed a searing, gasping breath, and then another.

“Did you see her?” Ellana asked.

“I saw the body, but at a distance - and I have not seen your daughter since she was a child.”

Ellana was leaning on Vivienne. She couldn’t feel anything below her knees. How could she describe Ashara? Her mind was a white roar and nothing more.

“She looks like Solas. She has his eyes.”

“I was not close enough. You need to dress, and you need to come with me. They want you to identify the body.”

Another breath, deeper and more painful than the last. After all this. After everything. They wanted her to look into her dead daughter’s eyes.

_No. It’s not her. It isn’t. Oh, gods, if it is, they will have to bury me in the earth beside her._

“Ellana.” Vivienne turned her sharply, forced her to look up. Her nails dug hard into Ellana’s arms. “You watched a mountain come down on you and you survived. You stood in the ballroom of this palace and denounced Florianne de Chalons in front of the entire court. You looked Corypheus in the eye and you did not tremble. You waged a war against the man you loved. You are going to walk out there and you will not show fear. You will remind them who you are. You will remind them that they are the ones who should be afraid.”

 _But my child_ . _My girl_ . _If it’s her -_

Ellana swallowed the words down. She emptied her mind. She broke it down into steps. Pull off your sleeping shirt. Bind your breasts. Wash yourself. Vivienne helped her dress. Ellana was surprised to see that she’d chosen something distinctly Elvhen from her closet. A pale green tunic that hit her at mid-thigh, made with overlapping bands and a high collar - not unlike the armor they’d seen the sentinels wear so many years before. Vivienne even chose the correct footwraps - and bent to begin wrapping Ellana’s feet.

“It’s fine,” Ellana said. Her voice sounded unfamiliar to herself. Vivienne couldn’t know the intimacy of what she was doing. This was something you did with friends, family, lovers. Something she’d done a hundred thousand times for Ashara, for tiny wriggling feet that wouldn’t stay still, _Ashara, stop it, if you don’t behave we aren’t going out and you are going straight back to your room,_ how many times had she lost her temper with that bright, energetic girl who might be lying dead down the hall -

“I can do it faster,” Vivienne said. Her hands were soft, warm, and quick. “There. Lovely. Now we go.”

When they reached the door Ellana took a deep breath - slower now - and rolled back her shoulders and tilted up her chin. Vivienne was almost smiling when she turned to her. It was the posture she’d taught a slouching, grumbling archer in the weeks before Empress Celene’s ball.

“Okay,” Ellana said, more to herself. Then she pushed open the door and they went out into the hall.

People had gathered of course. They watched her through their masks as she strode through. _That’s the mother_ she heard them say. _Yes_ , she wanted to turn and say. _I am her mother_. That title brought her more honor, more joy, than a hundred commendations, a hundred battles won, than their fucking game could ever bring. She floated on her anger past their whispers. Her ribs were ready to fly apart under the pressure of her fear. She kept her shoulders back. It was a long walk to the chamber where they’d taken the body. Briala and Ilriane were there already. So was de Pelletier. She wanted to bolt past them and she never wanted to touch the handle of that door.

“This is beyond unreasonable, messere,” Ilriane said. “I know the young lady in question. It is cruel to say that only her mother can -”

“No matter - she is here. Madame Lavellan, you should know what good Orlesians suffered bringing this -”

“I am uninterested in whatever lie you want to sell these people, comte. Let me pass.”

Both of their voices were loud enough that they carried. People would hear. Let them hear.

It was a small room. No avoiding the body. There was still a sheet draped over it. She walked forward to the unsteady rhythm of her own pulse, of the words in her head. _Please not her, please not her, please, please._

Her hand shook when she reached for the sheet. She gripped it tight. This was the last moment before she would know. It was like standing on the edge of a cliff. She pulled back the sheet.

It was not Ashara.

It was the bruised, death-bloated face of a young female elf - Tevene, perhaps, from her coloring - but it was not Ashara.

Her relief and her grief were instant. Both rushed out of her in a quiet sob. _It’s not her. But she is still out there. I don’t know where. And this is still someone’s daughter._

“Madame Lavellan? Tarlan?” Ilriane’s voice was hushed. The hand she placed on Ellana’s arm was ginger. “Is it -?”

“No. It isn’t. I don’t know who this is.”

She pulled back the rest of the sheet, slowly. She heard Ilriane’s gag at the smell and managed to contain her own. The dead woman’s torso was a mess of blood and gore. The kinds of wounds caused by swords. She wore no armor. She carried no weapons. Her clothes were simple and warm, the practical clothes of a poor traveler, and she wore a wedding band. How many people had Ashara been escorting on this trip? Just one family. Mother, father, little boy. The Agostinis, or something similar. Could this be the mother? But all the bodies burned…

_It isn’t Ashara. Thank the gods, it isn’t Ashara._

Ellana became aware of de Pelletier’s voice then, booming behind her in the hall.

“See how they weep over the body of an apostate, a murderer, a criminal. They cannot be trusted. Orlais must see their wickedness punished, their excesses contained -”

“That is enough.” Ellana was at his side. He was taller than her, of course, but that had never mattered to her. She made her voice and her presence large. “The woman in there is not my daughter but she was an unarmed civilian, an innocent. A wife and a mother. And your men cut her down. Your men cut her down because you want this. The show. The applause. You made sure all of this would happen, and I will prove it if it takes every last breath in my body. You will never sit on Orlais’s throne. Not while I draw breath.”

Ellana turned just enough to see that Ilriane was at her side, her mouth half open. She spoke before the ambassador could.

“Bring the body to our suite. We will see her washed and prepared for burial. I will send inquiries to determine her next of kin once I am confident I know her name. Then we will resume investigating who is really at fault for this nightmare.”

She swept away, through the path the crowd left her, past Vivienne. Briala caught her by the arm in the hall.

“You just gave de Pelletier exactly what he wanted,” she said through her teeth. “Do you know how you looked to -”

Ellana pulled away from Briala. She kept her high, and walked to the beat of her heart in her chest - a drum now, a marching cadence. She would see justice done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Prompts, suggestions, comments and general discussion more than welcome here or on my [Tumblr](https://buttsonthebeach.tumblr.com/)!


	4. Chapter 4

Ashara needed to wash her hands.

She focused on that thought as she walked through the trees. Her left hand was caked in blood and she needed to wash it. So she needed to find a stream, because she shouldn’t risk using up all that was left in her waterskin, and there was no stream nearby, so she needed to keep walking.

Her arm ached. She’d bandaged the deep cut on her arm as well as she could while fleeing the men and women who poured out of the white houses with the flowers. While fleeing the men who came from the other side of the field. The part that lay closest to the border. They’d blocked her from going home. She could stop now and bandage it better except that she needed to wash her hands and she needed to find the stream so she needed to keep walking.

Her whole body hurt. Deep. Deep in the muscles. Every single one. The pain settled in when the sound of pursuit faded (they were all wearing heavy armor, after all, and she’d used just a little of the blood flowing down her arm to speed her own pace, just a little). That was hours ago. It was night now, and getting cold. She could try drinking one of the healing potions in her pack, but those were precious too, and blood magic made it harder to heal anyway, so what was the point?

What was the point?

She was walking parallel to the border as far as she could tell. Maybe she’d even crossed into Enasan. When the stars came out it would be easier to tell. When she could feel her magic again, sense the Veil, it would be easier to tell. She couldn’t feel it now. No magic. No Fade. Just the occasional whisper of a demon promising to bridge the gap. They held no temptation. Her mother once walked miles in the dark, in the blowing snow, up a mountainside, with three cracked ribs and no more magic than the foreign one burning in her hand, and she survived. She was her mother’s daughter. It did not matter that it was getting colder as the night settled in and she hadn’t found water and she’d gotten out of the habit of wearing layers because she always heated herself with magic anyway and she kept seeing it, over and over, the angle of Gwynne’s broken neck and the fire melting the metal of the soldiers’ plate mail and the blood covering Tamaris’s throat -

Ashara stopped. Her breathing was deep and even. She tasted acid in her mouth. Her stomach lurched. Some part of her mind was panicking but it was buried under a thick layer of wool. She needed to find water for her hands.

It was only after she found the stream and cleaned the dried blood from her hand and arm and drank away the taste of bile and found a tree with exposed roots where she could hide safely that she forced herself to consider her situation.

She’d killed at least ten Orlesian soldiers using blood magic in front of at least a dozen onlookers. She was close to the border of Enasan. She needed to go across it. She needed to tell someone what happened. Would they believe her? They had to believe her. Would they take her to prison while they waited to find out the truth?

Had there actually been something wrong with their papers?

And if not, why did the soldiers attack? Why? They hadn’t done anything. They were doing everything they were asked. Velriel was so polite and now he was dead. So was Tamaris. So was Gwynne. So was Vito.

Livia and Sylvio.

She hadn’t seen them. Did they escape? She didn’t wait for them. Didn’t look for them. They were dead or they were lost in Orlais with no hope, no help, and that meant they would die anyway, and it was her job to protect them in the first place, she had failed them -

The panic and disgust filled her up until she couldn’t breathe but Ashara didn’t feel like she would cry, or vomit like she had after what happened with Falon’Din. She just felt suddenly and terribly cold. She couldn’t get the image out of her mind. Livia running, Sylvio clutched in her arms. Livia with her carefully rationed vellum and the perfect genuine joy in her eyes at the thought of having a book of her own, Sylvio and his warm weight in her lap the night he finally decided he could sit with Ashara instead of just his mother or Gwynne -

Ashara steadied herself as best as she could, pressing her head against the bark of the tree. She thought of her mother on that mountainside. People singing to her in the snow. She thought of ancient ruins and the desperate prayers addressed to her father lining the walls.

She would not leave people who depended on her behind.

She stood up, brushed herself off, and began walking back the way she came.

It was a matter of hours to make her way back to the town. By that time it was nearing dawn. She couldn’t even remember the name she realized when she got there. She hadn’t been paying close attention. Lost in images of painted flowers and her own stupid thoughts.

She stayed to the tree line and listened carefully. The air still reeked of smoke and flesh. Her head spun. She reached, tentatively, for the Fade, preparing to use a spell that would make her less noticeable. It felt like trying to pick up water - she could feel the magic, touch it, but every time she tried to pull it into herself it slipped through her fingers. She could only manage a small spark of energy between her fingers when she really focused, and even then it left her dizzy - and the demons were louder then, too.

_Think how much power there is in just one drop of blood. You could wipe this town off the face of Thedas if you let us in - we will find your missing friend in an instant if you let us in -_

She ignored them. She could do this without magic. She needed to find some sign of where Livia and Sylvio had gone.

 _A hopeless task_.

She felt cold. Despair, then. She wouldn’t despair. She would find them. She would not fail this duty.

She knew they’d run west. The ground was fairly soft. There had to be footprints - something, anything. She swept back and forth over the ground, trusting her dark cloak and hood and the cloudy dawn to shield her as best as they could. She knew she wasn’t looking carefully enough, knew she wasn’t nearly skilled enough to avoid making a mess of small signs she couldn’t see now. But it started to grow too light, and she could see the people in the town stirring - could see the armor more than half of them wore.

That was too many soldiers for such a small border crossing. Their armor was too fine.

She retreated to the trees, far enough in that she could find another hollow to curl up in. She tried once more to call on enough magic to set a simple ward. Something, anything to alert her. All she got was a thin trail of arcane energy, better than before, but not strong enough to shape into the form she needed. She looked down at the cuts on her arm. Remembered the power that shivered in her blood. No. She already would not be able to reach out to anyone in the Fade tonight. She would already be at risk of possession, the blood magic weakening even her lucid awareness of her dreams. If she used it right before she went to sleep -

If she even could sleep.

What had they done to deserve this? Any of them?

She dropped off quickly, and did not dream.

*

Ashara woke the next morning to the sound of footsteps nearby.

Her eyes opened wide. She immediately tried to pull a barrier tight around herself. Using the magic brought with it a shock that ran through her body and made her curl in on herself, gasping. The barrier dissipated. The footsteps got closer.

She had burrowed into the space between the roots of a great tree. There was an embankment above her. The footsteps were there. She held very still. The voices were Orlesian.

She was a fool to stay. She should have crossed the border during the night.

There was an urgency to the voices - and they were wearing armor. She could hear that much. Were they searching? For her or for Livia or for someone or something else?

She held her mother’s knife ready.

Eventually the footsteps and voices faded. She held still a while longer after that, afraid of how bright the light was, how close they’d been. She tried to use her magic once more and it flickered to life, stronger than the night before. Her mana was low - that much she could tell. She didn’t have any lyrium. It would have been with Velriel, and Velriel was -

They were all dead. Not Livia and Sylvio. Not for sure.

Maybe she could keep searching if she waited for dusk. There would be just enough light, and maybe whoever else was searching would have given up by then.

She passed the next few hours in a daze. She hated the feeling of being nearly cut off from the Fade. She hated that she was scared to leave the hollow. She hated replaying their encounter over and over in her mind. She hated that she didn’t know what to do.

There had to be hope. There had to be.

That was what made her stand and creep out of the woods and back towards the town and search again.  
This time there was a trail - grass and soft earth flattened down by something getting dragged along. Something bloody.

Ashara’s heart dropped. She followed the trail away from the down. It took her perhaps half a mile away from the town, to a small copse of trees - where there was a large swath of grass, beaten down and bloodied, and scraps of dark hair and cloth.

_No._

Livia - Livia who lived in a city all her life - had run as far as she could, had found the first safe place she could, and she had waited. And no one had come.

And Sylvio -

Ashara wanted to scream or cry but she was frozen. There were seven of them when they left Minrathous. Now there was only her. It was impossible. They hadn’t done anything wrong. They were just trying to go home.

When Ashara saw the shape in the trees, she thought it was a rock at first. Then it moved, and she thought surely it was an animal - and then when she saw the glint of the big eyes in the low light, she knew.

“Sylvio?”

The shape drew closer. Her heart beat harder. She stepped into the copse of trees and saw him crouched down, eyes wide with terror. He was alive. Oh, thank every spirit, every power that was, he was alive.

“Sylvio, it’s me. Ashara. You’re safe now. You can come here.”

He shook his head. “Mama said wait.”

The joy of finding him alive faded. Was Livia alive? Or did he - mercy of all mercies - not see what happened to her? There was so much blood in the grass outside, and on the trail leading back to the town. Surely - and even if she was alive when they took her - Ashara couldn’t rescue her alone, not from that many soldiers -

“I think - we need to go without your mama.”

“No.”

His lip quivered. Ashara looked around and weighed her options. They were secluded out here. The soldiers - or whoever it was - were gone. Sounds could echo across this part of the plains. If he started crying, that would carry, and then maybe they would come back…

Ashara crouched down in the leaves across from him. She took off her staff and her pack and laid them down. A wind came through and she felt the unseasonable chill in the air once again, and shivered. She took off her cloak and held it out to him.

“You can have this if you want.”

He reached out and took it. It was thick and heavy for his small, chubby hands. He couldn’t arrange it right. He flinched when she got closer to try and help. That was no good. She needed to check him for injuries. And they needed to leave. Soon.

“Where’s Mama?” he asked. “And Papa? And Gyn?”

She could only assume he was struggling to pronounce Gwynne’s name.

She didn’t know what to say - what words to use - she saw them, all of them again, right in the moment before they burned.

“They’re gone.”

“Where?”

Ashara felt her shoulders shake. She knew she shouldn’t cry, knew it would only scare him. They were gone.

“Where?”

“Somewhere we can’t go.”

His eyes were glistening now, not just with the sheen of any elf’s eyes at night, but with tears.

“I want Mama.”

Ashara thought of her own mother - the warmth of her embrace, her calm confidence, her knowledge of the world. She wanted her to appear and take care of them both with a fierceness that took her breath away. But she swallowed that fierceness. She was her mother’s daughter. She would care for both of them.

“I know, da’len. But your Mama would want you to stay safe with me, right? And get away from - away from these bad people?”

Maybe it was that she referred to the soldiers. Maybe her words were finally sinking in. Either way, that was when Sylvio began to wail.

She managed to gather him, cloak and all, onto her lap, though the position was awkward. His body was limp with the force of his tears and she didn’t know how to make his little limbs fit neatly with hers, but she managed to cradle him, to hold his face against her shoulder to soothe him and to keep him quiet. She murmured to him first in Elvhen, the way Papae had when she was little. But then she remembered listening to Livia and Vito and Sylvio talking at camp, in the privacy of their mother tongue - and she remembered, too, those nights in Minrathous when she woke gasping and terrified and remembering the day when her body was not her own, when she kicked the sheets off just to assure herself that she could move on her own, that no foreign mind controlled her. Those nights when an arm would snake around her waist and draw her close and when she would hear soft Tevene words whispered in a sleep rough voice.

 _You’re safe. I have you. Don’t worry. You’re safe_.

She had to ask Lucius what it meant the first time, but the nightmares happened often enough that she learned the words with time. She said them to Sylvio, tripping over the Tevene syllables at first, until the rhythm felt familiar.

 _You’re safe. I have you. Don’t worry. You’re safe_.

She cradled Sylvio until he quieted, and then gave him some jerky and dried berries from her pack, and told him they needed to go now. He held her hand when they left the copse of trees. She realized how slowly they would have to go as they made their way across the field. He would tire quickly, too. Enasan was close - but half of those soldiers had come from the direction of Enasan’s border on the day of the attack. Were there more in the woods, lurking, hoping to catch the final two survivors?

Her stomach knotted. She let out a slow breath through her pursed lips. She could do this. She could keep them both safe.

“Let’s go,” she said to Sylvio. “We’re going home.”

*

Briala, of course, hardly waited an hour before she made her appearance in Ilriane Tabris’s suite, where Ellana had directed her aides to bring the body of the dead elf. Ellana was helping them clean and prepare the body for burial. They didn’t know how, of course. They were all young, born and raised in Enasan, with little knowledge of death and its rites.

“I trust you are pleased with yourself,” Briala said without preamble. Then, to the aides: “Leave us.”

Ellana nodded to them. They made their exit, and Ellana gently covered the body of the woman where they’d left her exposed. Agostini. No, that wasn’t it. Something along those lines, though. Dead for at least three days as far as she could tell. Had Ashara been there to see her die? Was she jumping to conclusions, assuming this was one of the Tevene immigrants they’d been escorting when there was really no evidence for it?

“Did you hear me? The whole court is still chattering about your brazen announcement of your intention to interfere in the selection of the next ruler of Orlais.”

Ellana turned to Briala. The adrenaline of the morning was wearing off. She felt tired, yes, but not exactly ashamed of what she’d said. He deserved it. They all deserved to know. As if they were expecting anything less of them - as if the entire court didn’t already know that a hundred different parties inevitably conspired in the selection of a new ruler. It wasn’t interference. It was how their damned Game worked. But of course they would try to punish her for playing it.

The dead woman on the table in front of her was so young. She couldn’t have been much older than Ashara. What was her name? Hadriana? Lavina? The ‘L’ seemed right. Lucilla?

“I am not pleased with myself,” Ellana said finally. She didn’t need Briala to stew any louder than she was already. “Do you have any news, or did you have something else to share?”

“Yes. The orders to raise the tolls on the roads you mentioned, the ones your Vir’anor agents should have been taking instead - they did come from Bayard. Celene’s handmaidens looked at them, and the signature at the bottom does not match any of theirs, or any of the clerks’. Or Celene’s, for that matter.”

“So we have proof that Bayard and his sister helped ensure that a group of elves would end up crossing the border in a small, unfriendly town with a lyrium-using former templar, and Bayard and de Pelletier are known associates. All of that is good. All of that undermines his claim that this was an act of aggression by Enasan.”

“Not the way he is selling it. Bayard is saying that his sister was acting, however wrongly, out of kindness for an old friend suffering from withdrawals. He is claiming that he and Celene had a verbal agreement to raise those tolls, and that the profits are going to benefit the construction of a second university here in the Dales. And I know he is already whispering that your little - display this morning is proof that Enasan is looking for a weak spot in Orlais’ underbelly in this time of unrest. He’ll probably start saying that what happened in Clermont was an initial test by your forces to see how easily they could invade Orlais.”

Lies within lies within lies. They had _proof_. But they didn’t have a good story. Of course the Orlesians - the most powerful human empire in all of Thedas - wanted to believe that they were the victims. That the smallest, youngest nation in Thedas, one peopled entirely by a race that had been enslaved for hundreds of years, was victimizing them.

They needed a next step. Ellana’s mind was blank and dull. She pinched her nose.

“Have you been to see Celene recently?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“She is worse.”

“Could we link de Pelletier or Bayard or someone who associates with them to her illness? Has there been any proof that it’s foul play? Surely they would not trust the men who murdered their empress.”

Ellana caught her own mistake at once. Celene wasn’t dead. Not yet. Briala crossed her arms. That protective stance again. She was never sure whether or not the two women had reconciled. Not entirely. She remembered suddenly, vividly, the weight of an old elven locket in her hand one night in a gleaming white palace. A locket she’d left where she’d found it.

“That is to say -” Ellana began.

“The healers are certain,” Briala said. “It is not poison. It is a malady like any other. And there is little they can do.”

Celene was far from innocent. She had not always been a willing ally. But Ellana’s heart still twisted in her chest. Enasan would not have existed without her. Gaspard would certainly never have allowed it. Even Briala, had she been the power behind the throne, would have been more likely to demand that Ellana throw her weight behind making the elves a power within Orlais instead of creating their own country. It was only by balancing the one against the other - only by appealing to Celene’s sense of justice and progress - that they had drawn new lines on a map and given the elves a home.

“Then we throw our support even harder behind Absolon. And we follow up that final lead - the fact that de Pelletier’s own story says that there were at least a dozen soldiers in Clermont that day. More than there should have been. Whose soldiers were they?”

“Villiers said he had friends in the area. He already sent a raven yesterday asking them to look into it.”

“Good.”

Silence stretched between them. Ellana looked back to the body of the woman beside them. Livia. That was it. Livia Agosti. She could call Dorian and give him the name, tell him to try and find her next of kin and deliver the sad news. But was it certain that her husband was dead? And what of her very young son? Ashara would know. She would wait until they found Ashara. Until they had the whole story.

If they found Ashara.

“You should send Vianne away from this place,” she said.

“I already did.” Briala’s voice got quieter.

Ellana wished she’d never encouraged Ashara to join Vir’anor. She wished she’d kept her safe at home. She wished she was scolding her for leaving her books all over the floor again.

“Villiers thinks he may have word tomorrow morning. I would lay low until then. It would certainly make your poor Ambassador Tabris’s job easier.”

Ilriane. Ellana reenvisioned the look on her face again. If Ilriane had done something like that in the years she worked as Ellana’s own aide, she would have sent Ilriane straight back home. The truth was that Ellana was never a very good diplomat. Not a natural the way Josephine was. She needed people at her side, helping her find solutions, giving her ideas of what to say and how to say it. She was, as ever, the brash child who couldn’t stay still. Who couldn’t watch her own words. She pinched her nose again, harder. Her head was beginning to pound.

“I will. Please come to me with any news you hear.”

She went back to her room. She tried to read. Tried to write a letter to Cassandra asking for some sort of support. Tried to sleep. But she was, again, still that same child inside. She wanted to move. She wanted to do something. To be useful. She needed to get out of this hell of a palace. So she did. She walked around the city that belonged to her people so many hundreds of years ago. She went down to the alienage Celene once burned - rebuilt now, of course, no sign of what happened. She remembered bringing Ashara to Orlais for the first time when she was four, a small, loud, stumbling thing running up and down the streets of Halamshiral - no, it was Val Royeaux, they didn’t stop in Halamshiral that trip. Her memory was off.

What if she had made her last memory with Ashara when she said good-bye to her two months ago?

The thought was inescapable no matter where she went.

It started raining on her way back to the palace. She ducked into a small bakery to wait it out. No one else was there, except for the young man with dark blond behind the counter, who greeted her politely in Orlesian.

“I’m fine, thank you,” she returned in Trade. She didn’t feel like trying out her Orlesian that day. Most people here spoke both, anyway. “Do you have any coffee? Just a small cup.” It wouldn’t soothe her nerves but she wanted something warm to hold, something to do while she waited out the rain.

“Oui.”

He didn’t stare at her the way several humans had on her walk. She wasn’t sure if it was recognition - there weren’t many brown-skinned one-armed well-dressed elves in the city she supposed - or simple fear. If news had reached Minrathous, there were surely whispers in Halamshiral. In fact, when he brought the coffee to her small table, he smiled. It wasn’t the trained smile of someone who served people, either - there was genuine warmth in his hazel eyes.

She missed the days when a smile was a smile.

She thanked him and then sat with the drink in her hands, letting its warmth suffuse her, and she tried to let her thoughts wander to something - anything - other than the worn track of the last few days. Ashara. Celene dying. What this meant for Enasan. That portrait of her in the Winter Palace. Ashara. The body of that poor girl she’d left behind. The body she’d had them prepare for burial without ever stopping to question that maybe she was Andrastian and would want a cremation. Because she was running blind right now. Running scared.

The rattle of a plate touching the table startled her, she was ashamed to admit. She started, and made the human man start too.

“I am sorry, madame,” he said at once. “I only wanted to -”

She looked down. The plate had a single small green sweet on it - a little round cake sandwich - oh, what were they called - a macaron.

“It is a new recipe, you see. I wanted to get someone’s opinion before I show it to the head baker. And - if you do not mind my saying - you looked sad.”

Ellana offered him a smile.

“I see. I will give you my honest opinion - but I’m afraid I don’t have much of a sweet tooth. You would have been better off giving this to my husband or my daughter.”

“You will simply have to bring them next time.”

The image twisted itself around her heart until her chest ached. They hadn’t gone anywhere as a family since Ashara’s twentieth birthday, when they went to Bull and Dorian’s villa. It was natural. She was grown. But now - now -

She swallowed and forced a better smile of her own.

“I will. And I will have to ask for - ?”

“Laurence. Laurence Marchand.”

The macaron was perfect - delicate and crisp. A spot of sweetness on a rainy day. She went back to the palace and went to her room and slept as well as she could. There was no news, of course, in the waking world or in dreams. Solas looked tired.

“I want you both home,” he said.

The next morning there was another letter from Cassandra, assuring her there was no news and that Ashara and Enasan were in her every prayer. She went to find Ilriane to apologize but her aides said she was indisposed. Briala was not in her quarters either, though her maid had a message for her saying that both she and Vivienne wished to meet later that day. So Ellana went for a walk through some of the less populated parts of the palace, trying to hold onto that shred of calm from the day before. Her, Solas, and Ashara in that cafe, eating macarons.

Villiers was waiting outside her room when she returned. He bowed at once.

“Madame Lavellan. I come with news. Not news of your daughter, unfortunately.”

She was glad he caught himself. Her heart slowed. No news was no news. She would never forget the day before when he came into her room and, watching her carefully, told her they had brought her daughter’s body to the palace. How could he not have seen what an awful way it was to break that kind of news? So blunt.

“What is your news then?”

“I received word from my friends near Clermont about the unusual number of soldiers present on the day of the incident. It is - might we speak in private?”

Once the door closed behind them.

“The men my friends saw. They wore the colors and crest of the Ghislain family.”

Ghislain.

As in Bastien de Ghislain.

As in the family that Vivienne belonged to in everything but name, even all these years after the moment in that dark, silk-draped room where her lover drew his last breath.

“I do not wish to jump to conclusions, but - is it not true that you and the Grand Enchanter have disagreed in the past about many issues? Mages - and Enasan - in particular?”

Vivienne who was always angling. Always finding a way to come out on top. Who Celene must have called for when she first grew ill. Who would have known the empress’s days were growing short. Vivienne who stood there in this very room and told her she would not see Absolon Valmont on the throne. Who said there had to be a price for what she did when she pardoned the man she loved and used her power to give her people a home. Vivienne who knew Ashara worked for Vir’anor. Vivienne who knew Ellana would be at the salon. Vivienne who, twenty-four years before, kept taking her to the spa, even when the scars on her missing arm were fresh, even when she did not want to get out of bed, Vivienne who said _you will prevail. You are stronger than all of this. I believe in you._

“Madame Lavellan?”

“Thank you, Viscount Villiers. Is there anything else?”

He was taken aback. “I had thought you might ask me that. I wish to be of service to you, of course.”

Ellana reminded herself again that she could trust no one here in Orlais.

“I will tell you if there is.”

She waited long enough to be reasonably sure he was gone. Then she went quickly and quietly through those little used corridors to Briala’s room. It was nearly dinner.  Briala had to be in there changing from whatever she’d worn that day into something more suitable for the evening. She was right. Briala read the urgent look on her face at once.

“What is it?”

“Has Villiers reported to you?”

“No.” Briala looked suspicious. It seemed to be a genuine reaction. Why had Villiers come to her first when Briala was the one he had been working closely with? A question for later.

“He came to me not half an hour ago. His friends say that the soldiers who were in Clermont wore Ghislain’s colors.”

At that, Briala’s eyes went wide.

“You think Vivienne is working with de Pelletier and Bayard? It seems unlikely that Vivienne would be so - obvious in her support if she was.”

“That is true. Still. Whatever it was you wanted to discuss tonight - perhaps it is better that we do not involve her. Until we are certain.”

Briala shook her head. “I was going to come to tell you when we met. Vivienne left the palace suddenly today. She said it was business for the Circle, but…”

“But.” Ellana shook her head. “She said she didn’t want de Pelletier on the throne. Why would she…?”

Briala rapped her fingers against the bureau where she sat. “We have digging to do.”

“Yes,” Ellana said. Rain, cake, and sweet future thoughts forgotten. “We do.”

*

Solas stood in a field in Enasan, feeling for the energies in the Veil, and wishing helplessly for his daughter to return.

He could stand here, and with a flick of his fingers, feel the very fabric that held the Fade from the earth, could twist that fabric, could feel its every thread, could feel the places where it was weakening too swiftly and needed to be repaired - he could pull whatever energy he wanted across its barrier - but he could not bring her home.

This was part of his regular work now. When Ashara was young - when they had just begun their plan to weaken the Veil - there was little for him to do. He’d taken one initial trip with Falon’Din’s orb around their new homeland to begin the process, tapping into its power in order to begin reversing the polarity of the Veil in several carefully, mathematically derived places. They were minute changes. The kind that would escalate over time - like ice splitting open boulders. It was change so slow and gradual that he could never have used it to save Ellana when the very same energy was eating her alive. He always knew there would be course correction required eventually to prevent it from happening too suddenly. And that was what he stood in this field doing. Correcting a course set twenty years before, and wishing for news.

He’d been in a daze since he heard the news from Ellana. A helpless daze. She didn’t want him to come to Orlais - and she was right. She didn’t want him to comb the minds of the men and women who did this - and she was right. So he’d settled for denial. A stubborn, childish impulse, but it was all he had. He could still remember it. Coming home from that first trip. Ashara just barely able to walk, toddling across the floor to him, all but falling into his waiting hands. She was fine. She was fine. They were doing all of this for her, after all. Creating a world, as slowly as they could, where she might live forever.

He’d done the right thing, in the end. Preserving this world. And Ashara was the best and brightest reminder of that, each and every day. If he had chosen any other world, she would not exist. This was the world that shaped Ellana, that shaped their many friends, that shaped their daughter, and therefore it was good. And Ashara had to be alive.

Solas cleared his mind and began his work, mending a place where spirits pressed hard against the Veil, ignoring their beckoning calls. Someday - many years from now - he might invite some across. Strategically. When people were ready for such things, when the Veil was thin enough that crossing it would not traumatize them. Not yet. Today he needed to mend this weak place, and he needed to wait for news.

It was slow, careful work. He worked through some other problems as he did so. Dorian had posed some interesting questions about the raw Fade and the overwhelming presence of veridium there, something they’d been idly researching since Ashara created the orb with the veridium core, the one that helped save Ellana’s life when the blood magic ritual they uncovered did not completely do the trick. There had been some discussion of intent, of the tendency to associate the Fade with the color green, particularly a shade most closely associated with veridium, but if that was the case than why did Ashara’s orb work? Could intent over generations have been so powerful that -

It was too good to be true when he felt his wards at home go off. Not the blare of an alarm. But the deep tug in his gut, the friendly gesture of someone who knew how to open them properly. That was only possible if it was someone he had instructed, someone he had given the key to, as it were.

Maybe -

He left the field, made it to his nearest eluvian, moved so quickly through the Crossroads they were a blur, until he was back to the city, and then it was not a long walk at all, half a mile down the main road and then the first left and up the hill and another left and it all went so fast if he sped his step using magic, and then he was through the door and into the living room -

And she was there.

Ashara.

Standing there tall and dirty and exhausted and _alive_.

His relief choked him.

He probably said her name but he couldn’t really tell what the noise he made was. She was alive.

“Hi,” she said. Her voice was small and it cracked even on that one word. He had already crossed the space between them and put his hands on her shoulders.

“Are you all right?” He asked.

She started to nod yes, but he saw how hard she bit her lip. Her eyes glistened. He drew her close to himself - gentle, first, because she could be hurt somewhere, and then tighter, because she was shaking. He hushed her, and held back the tremor that threatened to run through him, too. She might not have come back. He came so close to never seeing his daughter again.

She was crying so quietly that he didn’t realize it until he felt the warm stain of her tears on his shoulder. When she drew back her eyes were swollen and red, and he wanted to watch every last Orlesian suffocate as he drew the very air from their lungs. She took a steadying breath and stepped away from him.

“I’m not alone,” she said. “Syvlio Agosti - the son, the little boy. I found him. Afterwards. He’s the reason we took so long. We had to go more slowly. I put him to sleep in my room.”

“Have you been anywhere else? Made an official report?” Solas caught himself. He had not asked the first, most basic question. “What happened in Clermont?”

Ashara took a deep breath, sat down on their couch, and told him a story of fire and death.

They had done nothing wrong.

And everyone but her - and the boy - was dead.

“I saved him,” she kept saying, whenever the conversation went to the little boy. She needed that reassurance.

“You did. You did everything you could, da’vhenan. Everything. I am so proud of you.”

She didn’t seem to like that. She looked back at him, grim.

“I just did what was right. What I had to.”

She was so like Ellana in that moment. Rejecting the praise of people who thanked her for saving the world.

Ellana. Ellana didn’t know. Ellana still lived in that awful, gray, not-knowing world.

“Your mother is still in Orlais,” he told her. “Trying to get to the bottom of all of this. It would seem that it was all a ploy by several Orlesian nobles to try and gain power within the court. Empress Celene is dying.”

Ashara’s face fell.

“That’s it?”

“Yes.”

She put her head in her hands. Tried in vain to straighten the disorder of her curls. Took another deep breath. Then stood from the couch.

“I’ll clean myself up and I’ll go make my report. I should go to Shivana first, shouldn’t I? Or - do I need to go higher up than Vir’anor? Should I go straight to - to the council? To Ilriane - no, she’s with Mamae. I’ll take some books with me before I go. Do we have maps of Orlais still? Will you be fine with Sylvio - of course you will, you always took care of me when I was that small.”

She kept talking as she moved away from him, making plans and erasing them. His bright and strong girl. This world was good because she was in it. She’d taken off part of her travel clothes before he made it home and he could see the healing cuts on her left arm, the souvenir of the blood magic she’d worked to save her life and end theirs. Good.

“Peace,” he said finally, when her planning was reaching a crescendo. “You need to eat and rest before you go anywhere else.”

Her face was screwed up in frustration when she turned back to him. He held up a hand.

“I won’t accept any arguments to the contrary. Please, Ashara. We have been so worried about you, your mother and I. Stay here a while and gather your strength. We will go make your report together.”

She sighed. “You’re right.”

He told her to lie down in their room so she wouldn’t disturb Sylvio, although when he looked in the child was so fast asleep that perhaps his worry was misplaced. He was so _young_. Solas watched him for a moment, reflecting on that - reflecting again on twenty-year-old plans, and the world they had wrought for the people who lived in it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompts, suggestions, comments and general discussion more than welcome here or on my [Tumblr](https://buttsonthebeach.tumblr.com/). Thank you for reading!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, for those of you hoping for a resolution to Ellana's wonderful and exciting and not at all terrible adventures in Orlais - you'll have to wait a bit longer. We're sticking in Ashara's head this time around. Enjoy!

Ashara was dizzy when she woke. Her heart pounded. Where was she? She didn’t recognize the canopy of the bed above her - no. She did. It was her parents’ bed.

She was home.

She let out a breath she’d been holding and closed her eyes against the dizziness. She took stock. She felt the warm pool of her mana in her gut. Still smaller than usual. Still - wounded, somehow, by the smite and by blood. The fact that she hadn’t slept deeply or well since the incident probably didn’t help either. She wasn’t used to sleeping on hard ground, in cold air, with a fitful child burrowed under her arm. Every twig that snapped was an Orlesian soldier. Every far off sound was a wandering bear, or worse. At least now she could reach out and touch the Fade, gather it up in her fingers, even if it still pulled and snapped strangely.

She wanted to go back to sleep. The dizziness wouldn’t subside. When had she last eaten? That morning. She’d had a last strip of jerky. They’d avoided towns on their way in so they hadn’t gotten any new food since they began their journey, and she always made sure Sylvio ate until he was full first. She didn’t know what to expect, even in Enasan. She didn’t know what people were saying about what happened. She wanted to go straight home. To the safety of her parents. She wanted them to sort this out, and she hated herself for that. What would Sylvio do, someday, when he needed help? This poor boy who had finally stopped asking whether or not they were going to wait for his mama?

Ashara wasn’t going back to sleep.

She got up and felt every sore muscle protest, but she ignored it. She fought with her mana to summon and heat enough water to wash herself clean of the grime of the road. She rewrapped her hair better than she’d been able to on the road, wincing at the feel of the oily, frizzy curls on her hands. She borrowed one of her mother’s long, soft tunics and a pair of her leggings. Before she put them on, though, she went and stood in front of her parents’ mirror and looked at herself. She didn’t look any different. How was that possible? She felt different. She felt like a hundred years had gone by. The circles around her eyes would fade. There would be nothing left to suggest what she’d been through - except the scars on her left arm.

She had three of them now. One from the ritual to save Mamae. One from that first searing, terrifying moment when she split her skin to call fire down on the men and women who wanted her dead. One from two days later, shivering and holding Sylvio. A quiet desperation. A need for just enough mana to keep them warm through the night. Three scars for the scrutiny of friends, lovers, and strangers. Three times she only wanted to protect herself and others. Three situations she never asked for.

Ashara dressed and went out into the hall. The smell of rich spices and meat and hot oil hit her nose at once.  Her mouth watered - it had to be one of her favorite Tevene dishes, one they made whenever Dorian and Bull came to visit. Lucanian sausages. She treated herself to it in Minrathous whenever she was there. Lucius made it for her once after he had his own place, apologizing all the while, convinced he was going to do a terrible job. She rounded the corner into the open area of the house and saw her father in their kitchen, absorbed in cooking. Sylvio was nearby at the table, absorbed with a paper and pencil, his forehead creased with concentration. Ashara stood for a moment. It was a bit like seeing a memory from her own childhood in the Fade - or, perhaps, like seeing something from the future. She was closer to being someone’s mother than to being a child, surely. She wished she actually felt that way.

“Ashra,” Sylvio said, spotting her. And then, catching himself. “Ashara.”

“Hello. Did you sleep well?”

He nodded. “I was in your bed. Here.” 

He pushed a drawing towards her. It was a scribbly approximation of some trees, and two figures among them.

“Ma serannas, Sylvio.” Ashara had kept up the ‘game’ of teaching him Elvhen on their journey. It was a good way to distract him while they walked.

“Solas said to make something pretty that I saw. I told him about Mama and Papa.”

Papae had turned to look at her by then, eyes sad.

“I look forward to seeing what you drew, da’len,” he said. “Just as soon as I am done cooking.”

Ashara felt a rush of gratitude so strong she sat down. Papae had everything under control. Food, and, more importantly, comfort for Sylvio. Then again, the rush of shame. Livia Agosti had been her age, and she was a servant and a wife and a mother who relied on no one. Mamae was the same at her age - no, Mamae was like that at sixteen. An adult with vallaslin, a hunter’s bow, and a bondmate.

“I can help, Papae.”

“Nonsense. Rest. I thought you would still be sleeping.”

Ashara rose and went to get plates anyway.

“He’s your Papa,” Sylvio sid when she brought him one.

“Yes. This is the house where I grew up.”

“Did bad men get your mama, too?”

Ashara felt those not-so-distant days when magic was consuming her mother all over again. And then, again, she saw the bright swath of blood on a field.

“No. My mamae is trying to stop the bad men who took your parents.”

“Oh.”

Sylvio scribbled hard on his next paper. Nothing in particular. Just dark, angry lines. She knew from experience that pressing so hard might mark the wood beneath, but said nothing. Neither did her father.

“Sylvio, do you have room for your food?” Papae asked when he returned. Sylvio shook his head, then pushed the paper aside. “Ma serannas.”

“Lasa - lasa - you’re welcome.”

“Very good. You tried, even though you could not remember all of the words. That is the mark of a great student. What other words do you know in Elvhen?”

Papae kept up that way for the rest of dinner, praising and teaching and soothing. There was still something nervous about Sylvio, something that made her think he might at any moment bolt from the table or sob or scream. Ashara saw it because she felt it in herself. She was so tired she didn’t think she could stand to help clear the table, but her mind whirred too loudly for sleep. She knew that. The study, then, where there would be books, where she could start researching - researching -

What was there to research?

What could she read that would help her understand the guilt, the shame, the fear, the nonsense of it all?

The clatter of a plate shocked her back into awareness - shocked her into sending out a pulse of mana that made the remaining plates rattle.

“Apologies,” her father said.

“It’s fine. Let me help.”

“It is no matter. You should rest while you can. I sent a courier to the council while you slept informing them of your arrival. I told them that I would not bring you to them any earlier than tomorrow morning.”

That irked her. She wanted to go now. She wanted it over with. And she wanted them to do - something. Anything.

What was there to be done?

“Let me help make up the guest room for Sylvio,” she said finally. That she could do. Pull out the bedclothes and coverlets and fluff the pillows, show him to the place where he would stay.

“Very well,” Papae said, though there was something displeased in his tone.

Sylvio followed her to the guest room when she made her way there, and looked at the bed with pensive eyes.

“It’s big,” he said.

“Yes,” she agreed. It was the size of her parents’ bed. “Is it too big?”

He shrugged and toed at the rug. “Maybe.”

Ashara wondered if he would prefer it if she stayed with him. Perhaps he hadn’t slept apart from his parents. She hadn’t until she was about his age. But she didn’t want him to sleep at her side as he had on their journey. She needed to be alone. She needed to be able to cry without fear of waking him or frightening him. She couldn’t bear how much he seemed to need her. How unequal she felt to that need.

They were just done making the bed when her father appeared in the doorway, a wooden box in hand.

“I have some things you might appreciate, Sylvio. These toys were Ashara’s once. You do not mind sharing, do you?”

“Of course not.” She went to him and started going through the box. Her stuffed nug, the blocks Thom carved for her, the dolls Josephine sent from Antiva. Toy soldiers from Cassandra. Relics of another time. Sylvio was on curious tiptoes already. She set the box down beside him. 

“I can’t believe you kept all that,” she went on.

When Papae’s reply came, it was in Elvhen.

“How could we not? Your mother takes them out now and then while you are away. Do not tell her that you know that, though. She will be so relieved when she knows you are safe. That your trial is over.”

Ashara watched Sylvio as he took the toys out one by one, every motion lacking the careless abandon of a child. He turned them over, examined them, set them down. This was not his room. This was not his life. She’d seen his mother’s blood cooling in the dirt and his father’s insides trailing across his own legs. She’d seen armor and flesh melt into one. Her neck and back were tight with pain and fear and though her mana seemed to be buzzing stronger every minute that it was buzzing with that fear.

“It is not over,” she replied.

Her father lowered his eyes. “I hope that you are wrong.”

He crouched down next to Sylvio eventually, and asked if perhaps he would like to build a castle for the nug and the dolls and the soldiers to inhabit. They began to absorb themselves in the task. Ashara slipped away when she thought they might not notice and went to the study where she used to write harebrained treatises on the potential application of spells that redirected ambient energy back to the user’s own aura, always the night before they were due. She ran her hands along the spines of the books. She’d been so sure, when she was Sylvio’s age, when she was ten, when she was fifteen, that every answer in the world was in these books. Then came Mamae’s sickness, and look as she might there was no answer for that here - but at least there were a hundred wrong answers, a hundred paths she could mark as dead ends. This time there was nowhere to begin. No path in front of her.

Nonsense. There had to be one.

But though she looked in books on Orlesian heraldry and great houses, on war, at maps of the terrain they’d covered, at a brief history of the Dales since the Orlesian occupation, at a translated volume of Orlesian poetry, there were no paths to be found. No path for her life at all.

“Da’vhenan.”

Her father’s voice called her back from the swirl of her thoughts, the emptiness in her chest. He was frowning once more.

“Yes?”

“To bed.”

There was a commanding note that she might have bristled at on another day.  _ I’m twenty-two, Papae. I’m not a child. _ Instead it worked a kind of relief in her. Someone would place a path in front of her.

But that wasn’t good enough. Not in the small hours of the night when she woke from still-dreamless sleep. Not when she crept to the guest room to see that Sylvio was still sleeping. Not when she sat and looked out of the windows she’d known all her life and felt out of place.

Not the next morning, when they went to the austere building near the center of the city, and spoke to the council. 

The seat where her mother would have sat when she was Chief Ambassador was empty, of course, because Ilriane Tabris was in Orlais too. But she still had to stand before Mateo Alvarado, the austere Nevarran man who oversaw trade within their borders - before Abelas, ancient and tall and still marked for Mythal after all these years, who commanded their forces - before Arlanal, still in her Keeper’s robes, who oversaw all of their arcane matters - and before Caralina Bianchi, the small, sly Antivan who oversaw their network of spies.

She’d known most of the people who filled those seats over the years, from parties when she was still so young that she danced standing on top of her father’s feet, to more recent ones, farewell parties that everyone pretended weren’t farewells, when Mamae was dying. They’d dropped by their house on official and unofficial occasions. She had no reason to feel afraid. She’d done nothing wrong.

But she couldn’t shake the feeling that made her clasp her hands tight and press her thumbs hard when she stood before them. There was no path beneath her feet. She was a child playing with matches all this time, and now the world might burn.

She shared her story. They listened quietly, carefully. She forced herself to recall details. She tried to hide the quaver in her voice. They were all so intent on what she had to say.

“And the soldiers who came from the other side of the field,” Abelas asked when she was nearly done with that part of the tale. “Whose colors did they wear?”

“I researched this last night,” she said. “My memory of those details is - foggy, but I could not find their colors or their symbol in any book of Orlesian heraldry in our house. Either they were disguised, or they were of a very minor house. One that would not warrant a mention in any text.”

“You corroborate everything we have learned from your mother and from Ambassador Tabris,” Caralina said finally. “This was an act of aggression on the part of Orlais. An attempt to stir up negative sentiment towards our country and our people. It seems likely that they have been trying to accomplish it for some time, given what my agents have uncovered. The bandits harassing the routes taken by other agents of Vir’anor, the sudden changes in required papers, the increased tolls… you were simply very unlucky. Or very lucky, considering that you are alive.”

Caralina’s words choked her. Yes. Very lucky or very unlucky. Which was it, in the end?

“I believe it goes without saying that we will be suspending all of Vir’anor’s activities for the foreseeable future, for the safety of our people, and under the recommendation of Ambassador Tabris,” Abelas said. “I trust that you will take this time to rest and recover, da’len.”

And that was it.

Rest and recover.

Her official report was noted.

No mention of justice, or further action. No comfort.

No path.

Papae had not come with her. He did not want to bring Sylvio, and the boy obviously could not be left alone. She walked home alone past the buildings that had grown taller each year just as she had. She hesitated only once, near the eluvian that she had used times beyond counting.  _ Go home and rest and recover. There’s nothing else you can do. _

She thought of Gwynne and Tamaris and Velriel and Livia and Vito, who would never go home again. Of the people waiting for them to come home.

She could go instead. To Gwynne’s brothers, Tamaris’s parents, Velriel’s daughters and grandchildren. She could not go to Tevinter - but her mana flared stronger now, and surely she would be able to walk the Fade soon and then she could go to Dorian or Claudia and tell them to find the Agostis’ family. Or to Lucius.

She would say that good-byes her friends could not.

She turned around and headed back into the city. She’d need to go to the modest building Ambassador Tabris worked out of, where Shivana ran the offices of Vir’anor. She needed addresses. Then she would go home and explain her plan to her father. This, she could do. This would heal things. It would. It would.

*

Her father was not pleased with the plan, of course.

“You have only just returned. You need to rest and recover your strength.”

“I’ll stop by the healer on my way out of the city for potions. Lyrium and healing.”

“That is beside the point. You have been through things that do not heal with a potion alone.”

Ashara’s bags were already packed. She’d made a plan for the most efficient route to visit each of their families after meeting with Shivana the previous afternoon, and woken up early to get ready. Her magic was returning steadily. She needed to go. She didn’t say anything to her father. She knew her determination shone through on her face, like every other feeling she had. It was a good trait to have sometimes.

“I would rather have you here,” he said at last.

Guilt did worm into her chest at the open worry in his voice. Her father was the opposite of her in that sense. He kept his every emotion carefully under to control, as far as he could. She hadn’t really stopped to consider how worried he and Mamae had been.

“It should only take me three days, at most,” she said. “I’m sure my connection to the Fade will be restored then. I’ll check in with you. I’ll send ravens if it makes you feel better.”

Her father only shook his head. “It is a noble thing you want to do, Ashara. I hope it brings you peace.”

“It will.”

She checked on Sylvio before she went. He was still asleep which was good, because she would have felt even worse leaving if he didn’t want her to go, and she needed to go. How could she stay here, in a house where she knew every knick and scratch and creaking floorboard? She couldn’t just curl up here and hide from what happened.

So she hugged her father good-bye at the door and set off down the path to the nearest eluvian.

She didn’t remember the first time she went through an eluvian, not really. The gentle tinkling sound was as soothing to her as the tunes her mother hummed under her breath while she worked. They weren’t a wonder or a luxury to her in her youth, but a simple convenience like any other. In her time working with Vir’anor and spending so much time away from Enasan, she’d come to appreciate them far more. The cool magic of the Crossroads and the speed in her step was a homecoming as much as the sound of Elvhen in her ears. 

She breathed easier as she took that first path, deftly weaving in and out of the others who walked it more slowly. They were on simple errands - going to the next town over on business, or to see a friend, or to buy a new dress. She took in the shape of every pointed ear, of the guards who stood at intervals with a watchful eye. They would not attack her unprovoked. Her tension began to ease, though her throat was still tense, as if at any moment she might have to shout a warning.

Velriel’s family was first. Many of the first immigrants to Enasan were Dalish clans who rushed to fulfill the long work of their centuries of wandering: a real home for the Elvhen people. Many people, and not just Ashara herself, who were Dalish or had one Dalish parent grew up close to the capital city as a result. Not all clan’s did as Velriel’s had done and gave up their aravels for life in a town, of course. Some still roamed the wilderness of Enasan, or lived in a camp like those that had defined their lives for centuries. Clan Lavellan was one of the latter. 

Still, there was something familiar about exiting the eluvian and walking along the dirt road to the sound and smell of halla out grazing, the friendly wave of their keeper as she crested the hill that left her looking down on the village where Velriel’s daughters and the rest of his family lived. Her mother teased Ashara sometimes, and claimed she didn’t have a Dalish bone in her body, but there was a deep peace in her when she heard their accents, saw the kinds of clothes they wore, and watched the many elves with vallaslin. Mamae was Dalish in her bones, and she felt closer to her with every step she took past ironbark tools and the tunes she’d grown up hearing from her cradle. 

She used to wish she did grow up Dalish sometimes, when people spat on her parents in the street, or when children teased her in school, or when she thought of the orb her parents found and what they’d done. Her life would have been simpler that way. And they seemed happy in this little village. It sickened and warmed Ashara in equal turn, each feeling coming like a wave. 

_ They are lucky that they don’t feel the pain that I do right now. But what if it doesn’t stop here? What if Mamae can’t fix what happened? What will I do? What will we all do? _

“Aneth ara, lethallan. Can I help you?”

The man who stopped her was older, like Velriel himself, and marked for June. Her mother’s old markings from a lifetime ago. He’d paused in his smithing to greeting her.

“Aneth ara, hahren. I am looking for Velriel’s family. His daughters still live here, don’t they?”

His face clouded at the name. “Yes. I take it since you ask for his daughters that you’ve heard the news?”

“Yes, hahren. I - I was with him that day. I am the only one who survived. Well - myself and one other.”

“Ir abelas, da’len.”

That word, too, was a comfort and a sickness. He hadn’t treated her as a child at first. He’d called her lethallan. Something in her demeanor gave her away. But she wasn’t a child anymore. She’d been out in the world on her own, found work on her own and done it well, held a lover in her arms in the night and looked on his face in waking. Yet she wanted badly, suddenly, for this gray-haired man to be the grandfather she never had, for her mother to walk around the corner of the nearest house and tell her what to do, because she’d come here to make amends and now she realized she had no idea what she would do, what she would say -

“Come. I will take you to his eldest daughter’s house.”

“No - ma serannas, hahren, but if you just tell me where it is I can go on my own.”

“As you wish.”

He gave her the directions and she followed them past children chasing each other in a rough and tumble play that made her heart sink because she’d seen Gwynne tumble so with the captain in her shining armor. When she knocked on the door of the house, a woman with Velriel’s nose and eyes answered, a child on her hip. She had vallaslin, too. Ghilan’nain’s.

“Yes?” She asked. It wasn’t an unkind question. Just a tired one.

Ashara felt pure terror blind her for an instant. She swallowed it down. She thought of Velriel’s gruff kindness when her heart was broken over Lucius and how he always knew where to find water and how he’d once stopped bandits from attacking their team with a glare and words alone.

“My name is Ashara Lavellan,” she said. “I worked with your father. I - I wanted to bring you word of him, and to tell you how very brave he was and how much I -”

“Come in,” she said at once. “Please, please come in.”

Her name was Davhalla, and she sent her eldest, a girl of thirteen, to fetch her sisters and brothers-in-law and Velriel’s surviving brother. Soon the house with its painted depictions of Vir’tanadahl and its halla-bone knives and forks and its big sturdy oak table was filled with voices. Velriel had four daughters, and eight grandchildren, and one more on the way. Three of the daughters had vallaslin - Ghilan’nain, Mythal, and Dirthamen - and the fourth was bare-faced, but they all had his nose and their dead mother’s dark, dark hair. They all brought food - bread, cheese, honey, fruit, cured meats - and they all asked for her stories of their father, their grandfather, their brother.

Ashara told them how on her first trip out with Vir’anor, full of more excitement than sense, she’d given away their position when they were attempting to hide from a great bear in the Dales. How Velriel had been the one to strike the killing blow, and how she’d apologized profusely, endlessly for her mistake, and how he’d only shaken his head and put his hand on her shoulder and said:

“Patience is for the old, da’len. You’ll learn. From me, I hope.”

They loved that story. It was something he’d said often, evidently, to his daughters and his grandchildren alike. Their mother never liked it. She demanded patience from young and old alike.

She told stories of their other trips, the immigrants he’d guided with that same endless patience, how he’d once found a stray dog and fed it scraps and helped it back to health on their journey until he found a nice farm in Enasan where it could live out its days. She felt happy as she told the stories, and then angry, because his family was big and beautiful and some power-hungry Orlesian fool had taken him from them.

“Thank you for coming to see us,” Davhalla said. “It was good to hear of Papae from someone who worked with him. It was hard for him when the clan settled down. He always wanted to see more of the world. I’m glad he had that chance, even if - even if that is why he was taken from us.”

“It’s not fair,” Ashara said. Her words were nearly swallowed by the din of the children playing nearby. There’d been some tears through her stories. Some anger. But that was all on the part of the adults. In that sense she was not a child.

“It isn’t,” said Dhaveira, one of the middle daughters. “For him to be cut down by Orlesian butchers -”

“Stop. Not in front of the children,” Davhalla said. “Nothing was ever fair in life, anyway. We had more time with Papae than some people get with their parents. We should be grateful. He died protecting others. And Enasan is not a nation of cowards. We are the last of the Elvhen. Never again will we submit.”

“Yes. There will be justice.”

“Or vengeance.”

Ashara stayed the night in a spare room in the youngest daughter’s house and mulled those words over in her mind. Vengeance. Justice. If Enasan was to have either of those things - if Velriel was - what role would she play?

*

Tamaris was an only child, the product of a Dalish mother and an Orlesian father, and like many elves of Orlesian descent he’d grown up in the borderlands where the two countries met; in his case, to the far west of the country, southeast of the Gamordan Peaks. It was a place of great unrest in their youth - not least because directly south of those Orlesian-influenced towns were the cities built by the reawakened Elvhen - but thinking of that when she stepped out of another eluvian only broke Ashara’s heart. In their youth. Tamaris was younger than she was. He would never have another birthday.

Walking through his hometown raised her hackles. She did not like the harsh, nasally sound of Orlesian. The houses were built in the same style as the white-washed ones she’d seen on that day when Tamaris’s throat split open in front of her.

And though his parents welcomed her in quietly, there was no platter of food, there was no glut of family to share tears and hope alike. Tamaris had been an only child. His parents’ eyes were hollow.

“Did he suffer?” his mother asked, finally. She had Falon’Din’s vallaslin and that tied Ashara’s stomach into knots. She’d seen that vallaslin a hundred times in her nightmares about slaves who wore it. Slaves who always felt like they were  _ hers _ because it would never fade, really, that sense that the memories were hers and not those of the man who invaded her mind.

But this, at least, was an answer she could offer.

“No,” Ashara said. “He didn’t. And he was - your son was a good man.”

Tamaris’s father said something angry in Orlesian. Ashara looked to him, confused. His mother translated.

“He was barely a man.”

There was nothing much to say after that. His mother thanked her for bringing her condolences. For assuring them that he didn’t suffer. Ashara missed her own parents so keenly it cut her. She found a quiet place to meditate and found she had a shuddering connection to the Fade, just enough for her to hear the sounds of it in her mind if she focused. Good. Meditating to connect to the Fade was much harder than controlling it when she slept naturally. Maybe tonight she would be able to see Mamae. She knew her father told her that she was safe, but that was not the same as seeing her mother herself.

There was so much time left in her day at that point that she decided to see if she could make it to Gwynne’s family, in the eastern part of Enasan, closest to the Frostback Mountains where so many Fereldan immigrants settled. If she took the right paths through the eluvians, walked quickly, only ate from the supplies she’d brought with her instead of stopping, she could almost certainly be there in time…

The eluvians were a true gift for her people. One of the things that reminded her, now, that she was not the same as the men and women who tried to kill her that day. That they feared and resented her because she was not the same. Because her people built these marvels - because she could move through this dream space of stone and air and brilliant color and traverse two hundred miles in a day’s determined march. She could breathe the arid western air in the morning and see the peaks of the Frostbacks in the evening. 

Her eyes glinted in the waning light, as did the eyes of nearly everyone around her (and she didn’t mind the humans who passed - they were many of them elf-blooded, or they were men or women who’d fallen in love and moved to Enasan, and she could never hate them the way those Orlesians hated her). Magic flowed through her veins and the veins of so many other elven children born in Enasan that she passed a new school they were building, another one for young mages, one of many in their country. That frightened people. She’d always known that in the abstract but her arm was still healing from the cuts she’d made and now she would never forget it. She was an elf, and that frightened people enough that some Orlesian noble could use that fear to shake a country to its core.

Gwynne’s brothers lived in a small house amongst many other small houses that, against all odds, did look something like a Fereldan alienage. But there were geraniums in all the windows, and the streets were clean, and there was no wall holding them in. That didn’t make it hurt any less when Gwynne’s seventeen year old brother answered the door, after a hushed conference on the other side. That when they invited her in their house was covered in empty plates and a hastily scrawled attempt at a shopping list pinned to the wall, and another list with various amounts of money neatly written on it, each amount crossed out, each amount going down. Gwynne had four younger brothers. The seventeen year old, Liam, and then three younger ones that she had to guess were between twelve and five. There’d been a sister between Liam and the next youngest brother, she knew. One who died of plague when their parents did, when the youngest couldn’t have been more than an infant.

“She was brave, wasn’t she?” Liam asked. He kept his chin up, though he had to bite his lip.

“The bravest,” Ashara said. “She saved my life, and the life of the young boy who traveled with us. I owe her more than I can ever repay.”

The four boys looked at her. She was taller than all of them. She wanted suddenly to hug them all. She could do something here, surely.

“Let me take you to the market,” she said. “I can help you buy -”

“No,” Liam said firmly. “Thank you, miss. We don’t take charity. The others in the neighborhood will help us out from time to time. That’s how things worked in the alienage and it’s still how it works. We’ll do some work for them, at least until I can get permission to leave school and enlist in the army. Then I’ll bring in money. Not as much as Gwynne, not unless there’s a war. But we’ll be fine.”

They kept up their insistence no matter how much she pressed. And they were so owlish and strange, like most adolescent boys she’d known. They had big hands and big feet and they didn’t know how to talk to her and they missed their sister even more than they wanted to hide how much they missed her. They weren’t going to let her into the secret of their family and their little wooden house. She’d done all she could by telling them that their sister was brave. That she’d saved lives. So she left.

She felt better than she had in days, though her chest hurt. She could probably make it back home before she got too tired. She didn’t want to, suddenly. It was unfair that she could go home to her father who had been so worried - unfair that he got to watch his daughter walk back through the door when Tamaris’s parents would long for that luxury as long as they lived - unfair that she got to sink back into his care when Liam and his brothers had no one to care for them anymore. None of it was fair.

Nothing was fair, as Davhalla had said.

She rented a private room at an inn instead. She had enough money for the luxury. Her own money. It wasn’t something she thought about often. She’d spoken to Varric for advice handling her money once she started working and she followed it, but she knew on most days that she didn’t have to worry about it anyway. She’d never had to make a list like the one Gwynne and her family did, with the numbers always going down.

What was she going to do now?

She’d gone to their families. Done what she could to tell their stories. And still, still, still she ached for a path to follow.

She dressed for bed, laid down, took out her meditation beads, and cleared her mind.

Her connection to the Fade flared to life like a spark in the darkness, and she gulped down breaths of unreal air and felt something close to whole for the first time since she took her mother’s hunting knife and split her arm clean open. She stretched her awareness for the sheer joy of it and nothing else, to feel how the Fade draped around her like a cloak, expanding and contracting with a touch of her will. Its every song filled her mind and she basked in the riot of that sound before she began to weed them out, searching for the songs she knew. Mamae, Mamae - where was she - not because she needed her but because she never wanted her mother to have the same look in her eyes as Tamaris’s -

She found nothing. She could hear so many other songs, near and far, but not her mother’s. Perhaps she was not asleep yet. She was still working for justice. Or for vengeance.

Her father was not asleep either, or was hiding himself in the Fade. She could just barely hear Dorian, Bull - even Cullen, who she knew less, perhaps just because she was so close to Ferelden - a note or two that was Claudia, absorbed in some other dream - and then a clarion call. A beacon. A worried, urgent signal.

Lucius.

She followed the long silver thread of song towards Minrathous. It was not easy. Tevinter was far and she was tired. But he was calling for her. She’d taught him this trick over many nights apart. He was not a Dreamer, but as a mage he could manage this much.

When she arrived, Lucius was dreaming of arguing with a merchant in a marketplace. He wanted to buy some dried, salted fish to snack on while he walked to his next appointment, but the merchant kept handing him flowers. He was frustrated, his Tevene angry and clipped. It was a tone she rarely heard from him. She took a breath, drew in more power, and corrected the spirit playing the merchant, changing the bouquet in his hands to the skewered delicacy he loved so much. She never liked kissing him after he ate it. He used to hold her tight after he finished one skewer and comically pucker his lips, telling her that if she really loved him, she would kiss him anyway.

Lucius turned.

“Ash,” he said. “It worked. I’ve tried every night since Claudia came and told me you were missing. I am so - so -”

His words floundered. She took in his brown eyes, the waves of his black hair, the carefully kept beard he’d grown. She knew that if she stepped forward he would embrace her and she wanted it so badly, the warmth of his arms, his hand in her hair. Her heart tried to crowd upward and she remembered, suddenly, the thing that had occupied her thoughts all the way through Orlais. His new lover. She’d forgotten about it in the wake of - everything.

“I’m sorry I worried you. I - it was true about the blood magic. I had to. And it damaged my connection to the Fade until now.”

“I don’t care what you did to survive. I’m just happy you did.”

Another silence in which they looked at each other. What did she say? She wanted to just blurt out the question.  _ Who is she? _ It was better, easier, than everything she was really thinking.  _ Was I wrong, a year ago, to let you go? If I hadn’t, would I have been in that field that day, or would it have been some other mage? What do I do now? Where do I go? What do I say when all I want is for you to hold me close and help me feel safe again? _

He was watching her, carefully, concern in his eyes. She turned towards the harbor.

“Let’s walk.”

They’d been here in waking often enough that as they walked she could sharpen little details - change the names on the street signs to the correct once, adjust the colors of the shutters - just for the joy of it. She was healing.

“Everyone is talking about what happened, even here,” Lucius said as they turned from the harbor and up one of the streets leading away from it. They used to take this route to the theater where they used magical lights to tell stories, where they would seat in the cheap seats in the dark, and he would put his arm around her shoulders as they watched. He’d always kiss her forehead now and then. Especially when something sad happened in the story. Like it was a ward he could use to protect her.

“I still can’t believe it and I was there,” she said finally.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

His offer was sincere. She’d heard it many times before. But how did she take him up on it, now, as a friend? They’d never been that before. They’d been uncertain strangers, and then lovers, and now -

“Not really. Not tonight. But thank you.”

“Of course.”

Ashara searched for Claudia’s song again but it was still faint. She was in a light sleep, perhaps - or maybe she was in Qarinus and not Minrathous? No, that seemed unlikely. It didn’t matter. Ashara wanted her there and she didn’t.

What else was there to talk about?

There was nothing to do but ask.

“I hear you have news, though.”

Lucius frowned in confusion. Ashara’s cheeks felt hot.

“I heard from Claudia before I left Minrathous that there is someone new in your life.”

“Oh.” He ran his hand through his hair in a gesture she recognized at once. He smiled, but he directed it at the road beneath his feet, and not at her. “Yes. I guess we haven’t talked since I met Rhea.”

“So…?”

He laughed and took his hand out of her hair. “Mae introduced us at a party a couple of months ago. That time you wanted to stop by and say hello, and I said I couldn’t. I had no idea she was trying to set me up. She claims I’m practice for her own children.”

“What’s she like?”

“Very accomplished. The third daughter of an Altus family from Qarinus. Dorian says his parents tried to match him with her mother at one point, actually. She’s been studying the use of force magic to propel various vehicles at the Circle there and only recently came to Minrathous.”

“You didn’t answer the question,” Ashara said impatiently. None of that was what she wanted to know. She got ahead of him and then turned so she was walking backwards. “What is she  _ like _ .”

“Oh - very clever. Well-read. She’s not very political but she agrees with most of what Dorian and Mae and Claudia are trying to do. You’re going to fall if you keep walking like that, you know.”

“Please. This is the Fade. I won’t fall unless I want to. And you sound like you’re reviewing a new business partner, not describing a lover.”

He winced.

“I’m not sure how to talk about this with you,” he said finally.

“What do you mean? We’re friends, aren’t we?”

“Ash.”

She’d gone too far. She was in her element in the Fade and out of her element in this conversation. Her words had poured out of her mouth before her mind considered them. She slowed so they were side by side once more.

“I’m sorry.”

Lucius was quiet a moment longer.

“Yes we are friends. But we used to be more. There’s no point in denying that.”

Ashara held her tongue this time. There was no point in denying that. She’d tried to distract herself from the ache she could feel even here, in dreaming, and she’d hurt them both in the process. Whoever Rhea was, she was hopefully better at this sort of thing than Ashara.

“I do like her,” Lucius said finally. “We’ve only known each other for a few weeks, though.”

Ashara thought of the first month she’d known Lucius, and all that happened in that time. Their introduction, their journey to Skyhold, the furtive, exploring nights they spent together on the way there, the way he’d taken her face in both his hands and called her  _ amata _ , the way he guarded her in the wake of Falon’Din’s possession. The way her heart already hurt to see him go when he left that cold winter morning with the promise that he would see her again.

“I see. So she hasn’t flung herself at you repeatedly in this first month, I take it?”

“No. That she has not.” He said it with warmth and amusement - and a cold drop of sadness she felt like rain on the back of her neck.

“Well, I’d love to meet her when I go back to Minrathous next. Though I suppose I don’t know when that will be.”

“I would be sad not to see you in Minrathous again. But above all, Ash - stay safe. Please? If you have to stop working for Vir’anor - if you can’t travel through Orlais for a while - then don’t. Don’t push through just because you want to.”

Because, of course, that was something she would do.  _ Damn what they say. I’ll find a way _ . They’d reached the top of a hill and she looked out over the mass that was Minrathous, a little hazy in this dream, but still a city of crumbling marvels and incense and former slaves. The city where they’d been in love with each other.

“I would be sad, too. If I couldn’t visit for a while.”

“Someday,” he said. “This tension can’t last forever.”

“No. It will break, one way or another.”

Justice, or vengeance.

Not long after, Ashara judged that it would be time to wake soon, and said her good-byes. Time passed strangely in the Fade, but it was stranger, not embracing him before she went, or tasting the lingering salt on his lips from the fish. But she woke feeling clear, centered. It hurt to see him the way it hurt to stretch a sore muscle. It was the kind of hurt that healed. He wanted her to be safe. He was her friend. He had not spoken of Rhea with as much warmth as she thought he would. 

She pushed that thought away with both hands and got ready for her day.

She went more slowly through the Crossroads that day. She left them once or twice through eluvians that she knew had scenic vistas - places where you could see both the majestic, ancient forests that had hidden the secrets of their people from human eyes for centuries uncounted, and also the clearings where lazy wreaths of smoke drifted up from farms and cities and towns. This country was an impossible thought twenty-five years ago. A dream for uncounted elves for uncounted years. 

This was her home. 

That thought released the tension in her chest. This was the home she risked her life for. That Livia and Vito died trying to reach. That Gwynne and Velriel and Tamaris loved enough to risk their lives so others could reach it. The home where Sylvio would grow up.

There was no path under her feet.

There was nowhere to go.

She was already here.

And if she had to, she would give up her own life before she let anything happen to her home.

When she crossed through the eluvian into the city she’d called home her entire life, she went not towards the house she knew well, but towards the large garrison, and the man who cried out for honor, for glory - for people to defend the country they loved.

“I want to join,” she said, certainty ringing in every word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dammit, Ashara....
> 
> Prompts, suggestions, comments and general discussion more than welcome here or on my [Tumblr](https://buttsonthebeach.tumblr.com/). Thank you for reading!


	6. Chapter 6

When Ellana went to Briala’s rooms the next day, her mind still swirled with thoughts of men in Ghislain’s colors bearing down on Ashara with murder in their eyes. How could Vivienne? How could she? It didn’t matter that she had not found proof yet, that she had to wait for confirmation to come from the inquiries they’d sent out to determine if Ghislain troops actually have been in Clermont that day -

Then she arrived in Briala’s rooms, and saw her sitting at her bureau, her hair unbound, staring at her empty hands in her own lap. Ellana froze. She had only seen Briala with her curly hair down and no mask once before, a long time ago, when Vianne was young and sick, and Ellana happened to be in town for negotiations, and had stopped by with a medicine that often worked for Ashara. One of the few small, personal moments the two women had shared. Briala wore no make-up, either. She looked older, more tired, and frightened.

“Briala, what -”

“Celene is dead,” Briala said, before Ellana could finish. Her words were crisp and hollow and there were rings around her great green eyes.

“Briala -”

“There is no time for sentiment. We must act quickly.”

Ellana wasn’t sure if the words were for meant for her, or for Briala herself. Briala scrubbed at her face and stood.

“I have already sent runners to the Council of Heralds and Absolon Valmont. I believe I am currently the only one who knows that Celene is dead but we cannot be certain. We must strike as fast and as hard as we can now. Absolon must sit on the throne before the week is out. I need - I need -”

Briala pinched the bridge of her nose and squeezed her eyes shut. Ellana’s chest felt like it was closing in. Celene was dead. They had no close personal relationship of course - but it was such a definitive ending to a time in her life. None of them were young anymore, the people who’d shaped the world when there was a breach in the sky.

“Divine Victoria,” Ellana said. “I will write to her. I will tell her what we know. If she punishes de Pelletier instead of Absolon or someone from Enasan, he can’t mount any kind of resistance. She’ll be able to create peace. She will listen to me.”

“Good. That works.” Briala’s eyes, when she opened them, were glassy. Ellana couldn’t help but reach out.

“Briala -”

“Don’t.” Briala’s hands turned into fists. Ellana thought again of that elven locket. “Go write your letter.”

Ellana passed the corridor where her portrait hung on the wall. She paused only for a moment to look at it. She’d been able to picture her idea so clearly mere days before. Presenting her triumphant new portrait to Celene. The smile the empress would give her, tight and annoyed. Celene who was never fully an ally and never fully an enemy. Celene whose life she’d held in her hands. She was only a painting now, as Ellana herself would be one day ( _unless, unless, unless, unless they simply said fuck them all and ripped the Veil out of Enasan, unless Ashara really was dead and there was no point in going on_ ).

For the first time, it all felt distant. She walked back to her room. She opened the door. She sat down at her desk. She found a sheaf of paper. She dipped her quill in ink. She began to scratch out her thoughts.

 

_Cassandra - I do not know when the news will reach you. Celene is dead. Everything here is chaos. My daughter is still gone. I need your support the way I always ~~dead~~ did. The way I needed your shield and your war cry. It can’t be de Pelletier on that throne. He will undo everything I bled for. Please, Cassandra. Speak out. Support Absolon Valmont. Ask your Maker if he has it in his heart to give my child back to me. _

 

It was nonsense, of course. More a poem than a letter. Her eyes hurt. She should sleep, even if all that waited for her was more disappointment. More nothing. She should sleep and let one more day roll by, one more day in which things seemed only to fall further and further apart, one more day in which Thedas felt more and more unrecognizable -

“Vhenan.”

Solas’s voice was a shock. She’d drifted into sleep without knowing it. She took a moment to orient herself to the dream. Everything was hazy except for him.

“Vhenan, Ashara has returned.”

The Fade burst into color at the words. A riot of violet, red, and green. She felt so light she might fly.

Ashara.

She was safe.

“To Enasan?”

“Yes. She is asleep in her bed even now. Her connection to the Fade is still damaged, or I would bring you to her. But she is home and she is safe, ma’lath. Our trial is over.”

The relief flooded her in waves. She wondered sometimes if the reason Solas and Ashara were so particularly emotional was because of their deep connection to the Fade. It was astounding whenever Solas gave her a taste of how tangible emotion was there. Relief was a nest she could bury herself in, warm and inviting and total.

“Celene is dead,” she said, but the words had no weight. “Briala is at work on the Council of Heralds to ensure Absolon Valmont’s ascendance to the throne. I was working on a letter to Cassandra when I fell asleep. If she condemns de Pelletier’s actions - or even just condemns the soldiers who attacked Ashara and her friends - it will be a great victory for us. Is Ashara well? Unharmed?”

“She is as well as she can be. She is shaken, and the combination of the blood magic and the smite have done her no favors. She brought a very young boy with her. Sylvio Agosti. I believe both of his parents are dead.”

So everything wasn’t falling apart. Ashara was safe. Ashara was safe. And she’d saved the life of a child in the process. She was a good woman, and a strong one, and she was safe.

“Wake me. I must finish my letter to Cassandra. We must move quickly. I want to come home to you both.”

Solas smiled, and put his hands on either side of her face. He bent and gave her a plush and satisfying kiss that took her breath away. He pulled back and murmured the words against her lips:

“Wake up.”

*

They’d chosen the swiftest raven to send to Val Royeaux carrying Ellana’s letter, but nothing compared to the swiftness with which Orlais descended into mourning and machinations.

Every time Ellana blinked more of the Winter Palace was covered in black crepe, and another noble donned a mask covered in teardrops made of pearl, sapphire and diamond. None more elaborate, of course, than Absolon Valmont’s. He looked every inch the emperor now, even if the Council of Heralds was waiting to officially give their consent to his coronation.

Even if he was, still, at the end of the day, a vapid and awkward man who inspired confidence in no one, no matter how many lions they wove into the silk of his cape.

But vapid and awkward also meant malleable. He went through every motion that Briala and Legrand rehearsed with him. He led the crowds in their extravagant mourning, placed himself in the center of all things, smiled and bowed exactly when he was supposed to.

Ellana wanted to claw her eyes out.

She wanted the ceremonies to be over.

She wanted Cassandra’s answer to arrive.

She wanted to go home and see Ashara real and safe in front of her.

She could leave, she realized belatedly, waiting outside for the raven to arrive. She wasn’t the ambassador any longer. She could leave and say none of this was her problem, just as she had said to Solas when she recovered. At least getting sick had forced her to give all of this up, right? But now, faced with the choice - she was staying.

She didn’t have time to question what that said about her. How far she was from the frightened Dalish hunter who quietly excused herself and threw up in the snow after she was named Inquisitor and saw all the faces looking up at her with joy and expectation. She spoke with command in her voice now when she asked the man in charge of the rookery exactly how long it would take for a raven to go to Val Royeaux and return. Command she earned. Command she deserved.

Right?

Cassandra’s answer came that night. Simple, and straight to the point.

 

_I am coming to Halamshiral. Wait for me._

 

Ellana hadn’t seen Cassandra since she was married. Since she was dying. She felt stronger already, knowing that she was on her way. She trusted Cassandra the way she trusted few other people. They spoke the same language. And though they had not always agreed, Cassandra had proven time and time again that she was willing to listen to reason - and she had cried the day she wed Ellana and Solas in the garden at Skyhold, dressed not as Divine Victoria but as their friend. Cassandra was the ally she needed right now.

Vivienne had not returned from wherever she had gone.

Members of the Ghislain family were still in the palace, of course, and Briala’s agents were hard at work trying to prove what Villiers had said about their soldiers being the ones in Clermont that day. Would they have that answer before Cassandra arrived?

That night Solas came to her again, but Ashara was not with him. Ellana felt the Fade grow dimmer at that thought.

“All is well,” he said. “Ashara went and made her report to the council today. She is understandably upset by everything that happened, and to learn that it was all part of a political ploy.”

“Did she confirm anything new?”

“They asked her what colors the soldiers in Clermont wore. She said that she did not recognize their uniforms - that whoever it was, they must have been a minor house. She did stay up the night before, studying Orlesian heraldry.”

“Truly? Then they weren’t in Ghislain colors?” Then - all was well. Vivienne hadn’t betrayed them.

Solas sighed.

“That rests on one assumption. That Ashara’s memory of that day is accurate - and given what she experienced, that is not a guarantee. I do not think she has seen a member of the Ghislain family since she was fifteen. The books we keep in our library are fairly new and quite accurate as far as I know, but…”

“You think Vivienne did it.”

“Vivienne is many things - canny and observant and shrewd are not least among them. If all of this is a grab for power, an attempt to rewrite the political landscape of Orlais - why would she not be involved?”

He wasn’t wrong - and yet Ellana did not want to believe him.

“Ashara has always had a good memory. Although, let me guess - she didn’t put back a single book she read that night?”

Solas chuckled. “No. Indeed she did not.”

That was one small comfort, then. Ashara was safe, and behaving the way she always did, and Absolon Valmont would be crowned and she would go back to Enasan and that would be that.

Ellana was old enough to know when she was lying to herself.

*

“Absolon will need to host a party to welcome the Divine,” Briala said when they met the next morning. Coffee down in the kitchen, because it was quiet and warm. “She will need to come in and greet him as an equal from the start.”

“I agree,” Ellana said.

“Of course, that presumes that Divine Victoria even intends to take your side. She has sent no further word, other than to say that she is coming? Nothing indicating that she is on our side?”

“No, she hasn’t sent anything else. But I know Cassandra. She will never stand for injustice of any kind. She will be on our side.”

Briala raised her eyebrows at that and took her last sip of coffee.

“Very well. I will begin advising Absolon as to what he should do. The palace staff are already working double time making arrangements for Celene’s funeral, of course - although perhaps Divine Victoria will say it should be moved to Val Royeaux instead -”

Briala’s finger tapped nervously against her cheek. Ellana felt intensely for her in that moment. Why was she the one seeing to all of this? She was another woman who surely knew, on some level or another, that she could walk away from this situation, leave it to others - surely there were other courtiers eager to make themselves useful to the man who was about to become the emperor of Orlais - and yet she didn’t.

“I know of a bakery that might be able to supply sweets for the party to welcome the Divine,” Ellana said. “At least allow me to arrange that.”

Briala waved dismissively, not turning to face Ellana.

“Fine, fine. As you wish. I will have one of my ladies bring you some gold.”

“No need. It will be my gift. Enasan’s gift, in this time.”

Because, yes, that was a good idea. She was no artist but she could describe or sketch some Elvhen designs for the cakes. It would be a good gesture. She had learned something in her twenty years of politics. She wasn’t that poor of a student.

Her shoulders and chest loosened the instant she was out of the palace nonetheless. It wasn’t just the fresh air - though she would prefer a forest to a castle or a palace until the day she died - but again the sense that the weight of all those politics was behind her. After this. After this she would leave it behind forever.

Laurence was not at the counter when she entered the bakery this time. An older man with a sour face and a hooked nose was instead.

“Yes?” he asked curtly.

Every instinct being an elf ever bred in Ellana made her hackles raise at his tone.

“Good afternoon,” she said, crisply. She raised her chin. She kept all traces of her Dalish accent from her voice - it was the trick that confused Varric when they first met. Her city elf parents never quite acquired the accent themselves, and she could make herself sound like them when she wanted to. “I had the good fortune of coming to your establishment the other day and I was hoping to engage your services on behalf of -”

“We do not serve your kind anymore.”

Ellana’s cheeks got hot. “I beg your pardon?”

“The elf-loving harlot who sat on our throne is dead. There will be reason now. Order. We won’t have to pretend to accept your - filth anymore. Get out.”

The rage roiled now, sloshed in her chest, hot and yet solid, taking up so much space it was hard to breathe. _You ignorant fool. I’ve shed more blood on Orlais’s soil - for Orlais - than you ever will in your life. We are people. We are people!_

The man balked, his sour expression beginning to shift into a horrified one. Ellana knew her fury showed on her face. Good. She let it linger there for a moment. Then she took a breath and reigned it in. There were other people in the bakery. Humans, of course. She caught a glimpse of the young man who’d served her before - Laurence. He was watching her. Whatever she did in that moment, the humans watching her would carry it with them as and example of what happens when _those people_ get ideas in their heads. When they think they’re better than others.

So she let the rage cool. She smiled the smile Vivienne and Josephine and Leliana used to make her practice in the mirror.

“Very well. I suppose your narrow-mindedness will cost you the opportunity to serve your goods to the next Emperor of Orlais. I’ll be sure he knows the name of this place, before the day is over. Good afternoon, messere.”

She’d already turned when he muttered the next words. _Lying knife-eared bitch._ He said it in Orlesian but she’d been called that in Val Royeaux on the day she met Sera and Fiona and Lord Seeker Lucius, in salons in the north of the empire where they added on _Fen’Harel’s whore_ for good measure. She knew the words. She ground them beneath her heel as she walked out, her head high. Her hand was numb and shaking. She clench it into a fist once she was back on the cobblestone street.

“Madame, wait, please.”

The shout caught her by surprise. She turned. It was Laurence, coming towards her at a brisk pace.

“Yes?” Her tone was clipped. What had he come after her for? She was aware, suddenly, of how tall he was, how broad in the way that human men often were. It made an instinctive spark of nerves course through her blood. The kind that made her pause and remind herself where her knife and poisons were, concealed in the folds of her clothes.

“I am sorry for what my master said. Not all Orlesians think that way. I have some friends who work in other bakeries, for kinder masters. I can tell you where they are, if you would like. Or I can take you to them, once my day is done.”

Ellana looked him up and down again, not in fear but appraisal this time. He was young, still boyish in his face, though she wasn’t sure exactly how old he was. He had an earnest sort of anxiousness on his face. Embarrassment, maybe. He’d brought her a sweet when he thought she looked sad, when his master was away.

“How much does he pay you?” She asked.

He lifted his eyebrows.

“That - is a forward question, madame.”

“Then don’t answer it. If I pay you double and bring you to the Winter Palace, can you bake for us? Macaroons, maybe, like you did the other day?

His eyebrows went higher. “I - yes, madame.”

“Excellent. I’ll expect you by sundown, then. I will leave word for you with the guards.”

“Good. Yes. I - this is unexpected. Who should I ask for, madame? When I arrive?”

Ellana held out her hand.

“Ellana Lavellan.”

His eyes widened. His jaw went slack for an instant but then he caught himself. He bowed, slightly, over their clasped hands.

“I will not let you down, Madame Lavellan. Until sundown.”

It was impulsive, she knew even as she walked away, but it felt good. There were good people everywhere. Even in Orlais. She would bring them together, even if she had to find them one at a time.

Laurence was not as starstruck as Ellana expected him to be when they met that evening, and she showed him around the main areas of the Winter Palace. He took it in stride, nodding now and then as she shared a story. He did pause for a long moment at her own portrait, looking back and forth between it and her.

“It isn’t a good likeness,” she said finally.

“I am glad you see it too. I was weighing whether or not I would be opening my mouth and putting in my foot.”

She snorted. “I like my friends honest.”

“Ah. Good.” He paused, licked his lips, then said: “My father served at your side in the Arbor Wilds, you know. He loves to tell the story. You made a point of going through the camp and speaking to the Orlesian soldiers before the assault on the temple. You did not speak to him directly - but he appreciated it very much.”

Ellana’s heart warmed. “You will have to tell him that I appreciate his service, then. And that he seems to have raised a good man.”

Laurence was a little more flustered, however, at the realization that his goods would be served at a party held to honor Divine Victoria. He slipped into another world when she brought him to the kitchen, going from shelf to shelf, counter to counter, muttering to himself, but never forgetting to spare a smile for any servant who happened to pass through - and certainly never missing one of the pretty, young ones, all of whom earned a particular sort of friendly, confident smile from him, and a lingering glance. Ellana had to roll her eyes at that.

“Here - the first half of your payment, with extra for any purchases you may need to make. We expect the Divine in two days’ time.”

The bag had her own official seal embroidered on it. He ran his thumb over it. He hesitated a moment. They were alone. Then he looked her directly in the eye and spoke.

“Is it true what they say? That the elf who escaped Clermont is a blood mage? That she is still out there, killing more Orlesians?”

The ease Ellana had begun to feel around him vanished. There were a hundred degrees between a man like Laurence’s master who would openly spit venom and someone who truly respected her people. Which of them was he?

“No. That’s nonsense. She was the victim that day. She fled home to Enasan, where she is safe.” She moved away from him, toward a different countertop. Was this the one she balanced on, swearing, trying to reach the halla statue perched on the rafters? Was Ashara feeling well, or was she afraid right now, traumatized by what she’d seen? By what she’d done?

“You seem quite - emotional, madame. I hope I have not offended.” Laurence did not move from where he stood, but his voice was gentle.

She regarded him closely. He did not shrink under her gaze. It was not exactly a secret at court who the supposed - _actual_ \- blood mage was. He would hear soon enough, even if he somehow had not heard already.

“The elf you ask about is my daughter.”

His eyes didn’t widen this time. If anything, he looked sad.

“Ah. My apologies for speaking of her in an unkind way. It is a shame she had to resort to violence that day.”

 _Had to resort to violence_. His accent was thick, and he’d worded other sentences strangely - maybe he didn’t mean those words in quite that way. But still her need to protect flared up in her stomach, just as it had every time another child pushed Ashara or called her a rude name.

“Had to resort to it? Her life was threatened. She could have died.”

Laurence raised his hands in a mollifying gesture.

“That is true, yes. I only wish that she had found another way. Perhaps things would not be so bad now.”

“Spoken like a man who has never had his life threatened simply for the shape of his ears.”

Ellana meant her words to cut, and they did. Laurence lowered his gaze.

“You are right, madame. That was - idealistic of me to say.”

And even all these years later, Ellana could hear her own mother’s voice in her ears. _Be gentler, child. You are too sharp with your tongue_.

“Ashara is an idealist too. I am sure that what she did to survive hurts her deeply. I hope all of this nonsense will be over soon, so that I can go home to her.”

Laurence had gotten himself a cup of water from the nearby spigot - part of a system of magic marvels earned by Celene’s interest in the occult. It was still strange to think of her dead. The thought came to Ellana at odd moments, like now, watching Laurence drink from that cup, and realizing that Celene would never drink anything ever again. That that fate was waiting for all of them - unless. That great big, mysterious unless. That orb locked safe away somewhere in Enasan. The source of their homeland’s weakening Veil.

“Well then. To idealists,” Laurence said, raising his cup.

Ellana had been an idealist in the Winter Palace once, she reflected on her way back to her room. She’d thought she could bring all sides together to see reason. That Orlais would be better for having Celene, Gaspard, and Briala all working together. It was the way she’d seen conflicts resolved in her clan time and time again. _Hash things out. We all have to live with each other at the end of the day._ It wasn’t how things worked in Orlais. She’d had to keep up the force of her blackmail for many years to keep the balance of power there, until Gaspard was at last too old for a coup, and Briala had carved her way to Marquise of the Dales in her own right, with no help from Celene. She had no such idealism now. She could hope this party and the secrets and deals they would trade would be enough - but she could not hope as far as Ashara would, if she were there, or as far as this Laurence seemed to. Not in the dim twilight hours, alone in her room.

*

Cassandra arrived not with the fanfare her station deserved, but muddied, alone, on a borrowed horse, and disgruntled as ever.

There were rumors that some Chantry mothers saw her on her way through the city and fainted at the sight.

Her retainer arrived a few hours after she did, looking harried and frustrated. Apparently she had insisted on riding as fast as she could, changing horses whenever and wherever possible, and they were not even the retainer she’d originally set out with, but a group of Chantry soldiers chosen hastily at her last stop.

Ellana did not see her when she first arrived, being too busy with Laurence helping him test out designs for his various pastries that would incorporate both Orlesian and Elvhen patterns and influences. Her heart lifted just to know Cassandra was in the palace, though. An ally. A friend. Cassandra did not carry a shield anymore but Ellana already felt safer nonetheless. She felt even better that evening when she stopped by Cassandra’s room, and was greeted with a warm embrace.

“My friend,” Cassandra said. She held the embrace for a long moment. “The last time I saw you, at Skyhold - I thought I would never see you again.” Cassandra put her hands on either of Ellana’s shoulders when she pulled back. “You have more gray hairs, though. Does married life not suit you?”

Ellana couldn’t help but laugh. “It does suit me. You’ll have to blame Ashara for those.”

Cassandra shook her head, her frown returning.

“I am pleased to hear that your daughter is safe. I prayed each day that the Maker would make it so. These are terrible times.”

“Yes,” Ellana said. “Not least because I’ll need another dress for this party.”

Cassandra laughed. “At least I am not expected to have a varied wardrobe these days.”

“I take it you have spoken to Ilriane Tabris about Enasan’s position on what has happened.”

“Yes. She tells me you have been quite - involved in the proceedings.”

“She’s not wrong. But without my involvement perhaps we would not know the extent of de Pelletier and Bayard’s involvement. Of the Chantry’s.”

Cassandra raised a mollifying hand. “Yes. True. I can now tell you with confidence that I have every intention of condemning what de Pelletier and his lackeys have done. But I must admit - Absolon Valmont gives me little confidence.”

“He will have an excellent team of advisors.”

“You mean that he will be a puppet. Likely Briala’s puppet. Ellana, you could have put Gaspard in this very position all those years ago. Why change your mind now?”

“Enasan didn’t exist then. I didn’t even have hope that it could. But now my people have a home, and I have to do whatever I can to keep that home safe.”

Ellana did not say the rest of what she thought: that all those years ago she had been a naive idealist. She thought, again, of Laurence.

Cassandra did not like that answer. “You are not wrong. Still. I wish there was another candidate. One who did not so clearly seek war and destruction, but was also not an empty vessel to be filled with someone else’s ambitions.”

Ellana grit her teeth. The world felt offkilter now. Tilted just enough to notice.

“Yes, well. It is Orlais. Pickings are rather slim.”

Cassandra shook her head. “It is late. We will speak more of this tomorrow, I think. Vivienne will return then as well.”

Ellana’s heart sped up. “Her business for the Circle is complete then?”

Cassandra paused. “Yes. For the Circle.”

Ellana’s heart did not slow all the way back to her room. Vivienne was in contact with Cassandra. About what? And where had Cassandra sent her, if not on some business for the Circle? And if she did not like the idea of Absolon Valmont - then who? Who would she put forward?

Ellana tried neither brandy nor sleeping potion that night. She tried stretching, meditating. Breathing in and out, slowly and deeply, feeling for each separate muscle in her body, tensing it and relaxing it, until she finally hit that utter relaxation that allowed her to slip into sleep, where at some point, she was conscious again, and in Solas’s arms. There was a warm breeze, the smell of salt - they were on their honeymoon again, on the northern coast of Orlais. The one they took when they’d been married for over a year already - when she was healed and Ashara was first off working with Vir’anor - and they were so blithely happy then, to see their daughter off in the world -

“You are tense even here, vhenan.”

She was pillowed on his chest. He brushed her cheek with the back of his hand. She weighed telling him what she feared while falling asleep. Instead she burrowed into him.

“It will all be over after the party. Is Ashara well?”

Now Solas was tense. “She is away for now. She wanted to go and see the families of the friends she lost that day in Clermont.”

Ellana smiled sadly. “That was kind of her.”

Solas had no shirt on now. Had he ever? Sometimes it was hard to tell here in the Fade. She kissed his bare chest. He shivered.

“I have been doing my best with Sylvio in her absence. How I feel for the child - so afraid and so alone. When I can make him forget what he has been through, though, it is good to have a child in the house again.”

Ellana closed her eyes again and felt that old familiar ache. The many months of trying and failing to give Ashara a sibling. She could hear waves now. There was another life, maybe, where they had run away from all of it after the war ended, and lived in a cottage by the sea and had eight curly-haired children. Maybe that world was even a happier one. But it was one without Enasan. One where they turned away from their responsibilities to their people.

“Vhenan,” he said again. Not quite a question or a statement. Just a gentle, lilting call of his favorite name for her. She wrapped herself tightly around him and he returned the embrace and let her feel the wash of his love, his reassurance. His fear was only a small undercurrent. She did not let it add to her own.

*

The party started off well.

Cassandra was the highest ranked there, of course, so all of the pomp and circumstance revolved around her, and Absolon played his role perfectly (woodenly). Cassandra spoke words of condolence for Celene that seemed mostly sincere. There was plenty of champagne. Laurence brought Ellana a third glass at one point, when the formal dinner was over, and people were meandering and sampling the various desserts that he and the palace staff had whipped up. Ellana had insisted that he be allowed to mingle at this point, hoping that one of the more liberal nobles might be enchanted enough to make him an offer. He was a good young man. He deserved that. And if he and his new patron continued to spread the good word of how friendly, how kind, how helpful Ellana Lavellan had been - well -

The Game had a way of twisting even the qualities she took pride in into something she hated - which was probably why Laurence said _you look like you need this_ when he handed her that third glass. Her own disgust showed on her face.

The trouble came later, when the dancing was over, and people were drunk, and fragmenting off into little groups in little rooms and little garden nooks - Ilriane Tabris sweet-talking nobles even though she was flushed with wine and nerves, de Pelletier on the other side of the room, loudly telling stories of wars he never fought in -

That was when Ellana realized, sober now, just getting out of a conversation with an emissary from Orzammar, that she had not yet seen Vivienne.

She turned instinctively to find Cassandra, unmistakable in her white regalia, and saw that she, too, was nowhere to be found. The ballroom was a sea of silk and booze and crying masks and Ellana knew then that something was wrong. She steadied herself against that feeling. She’d noticed. She wouldn’t be caught off guard now. And there was a chance she was only paranoid. There were any number of things that Vivienne and Cassandra might need to discuss that did not involve Ellana. She was not Inquisitor anymore. They were not all one team, united against one common enemy.

When one of Cassandra’s assistants came and asked if she would come and meet with the Divine for a moment, Ellana smiled and said of course, and followed the man to an out of the way room near the garden, where Cassandra sat in an old chair, her headdress removed, her face like stone. Vivienne was there too, although standing.

“Good evening,” Ellana said. “I trust your trip was a good one, Vivienne? That your Circle business is complete?”

Vivienne looked suddenly sad - and then angry. And then she looked away.

“I am going to give you one chance,” Cassandra said, quiet. “To tell me what is happening with the Veil in Enasan.”

Ellana did not panic. She did not even really react, at first. She was acting on instinct now. But good instincts, old instincts. Instincts one of the women in that room taught her. She said the first thing that came into her mind.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Vivienne let out a quiet breath. Something that was almost a laugh.

“What I mean,” Cassandra said. “Is that for two or three years now there have been rumors of strange fluctuations in Enasan. No one could ever confirm them for us, and so I believed that they were simply that - rumors. I told myself that I know you, and that you know Solas, and that no such thing was possible. That even if it was possible, you would not allow it.”

She was right. Of course there had been rumors. They’d always stamped them out one way or another. Some spies for various nations met harsh ends. In other cases, Solas would root out what location had been compromised and reinforce it, so that no one could go back and confirm. So now - what could have happened now?

“But now I have confirmation. Something is awry, and I want to know what it is. I want to hear it from you, my old friend, while you look me in the eye.”

Ellana’s eyes went to Vivienne. “I take it you are the one telling her this?”

“I am. I returned from a visit to Clermont and the border only this afternoon.”

Clermont. Could Ashara’s use of blood magic have affected something there? It was well outside the radius usually affected by Solas’s magic - wasn’t it? She couldn’t remember suddenly. She was warm.

“And what is it that you think you sensed there?”

“The Veil was thin there, but that was not what alarmed me. It was a given, in fact, considering that your daughter used blood magic to save herself.” Ellana was hot now, not warm, already opening her mouth to reply, but Cassandra held up a warning hand. Vivienne went on. “What alarmed me was that I sensed a change in the polarity of the Veil. A reversal, meant to pull it apart. It felt like someone had been pulling on two ends of a tapestry for a long time, and the weave was parting just enough to let a little light through. It was not so everywhere that I checked - but the further my escorts took me into Enasan, the more I began to notice it. It is subtle enough that most mages might miss the difference, to be sure - but did you really think I would not learn everything there was to learn about the Veil, knowing Solas was still alive?”

There was some piece she was missing here - something she might be able to use to turn the tide, to buy herself just another moment longer before she had to, for the first time in twenty-two years, look her friend in the eye and lie.

“What made you go to Clermont in the first place? Or were you only there to check up on the soldiers you sent to kill my daughter?”

That made Cassandra’s eyes flare wide - and Vivienne’s, too.

“Etienne Villiers told me what his friend discovered - that the soldiers who were there in Clermont unlawfully that day wore Ghislain colors. Whatever it is you claim to have sensed about the Veil - it is clearly part of the same plot.”

Energy flooded Ellana now - and then sickness, deep in her gut, seeing the look on Vivienne’s face.

“You truly think that I would send soldiers to kill your only child?”

She should have known.

She should have known the moment Villiers told her.

Vivienne would not do this.

“Etienne Villiers told you this?” Cassandra broke in.

“Yes. After his friend did some digging in Clermont on my behalf. He has been very helpful to me in my time here, trying to get to the bottom of this - and to Marquise Briala.”

Cassandra’s eyes were on Vivienne now. “Yet he is the one who came and told you that this same friend sensed dangerous problems with the Veil near Clermont and the border. Is he telling different stories to different people?”

“He is a shrewd young man. He is playing the Game. What matters is that I can corroborate the story he told me. Ellana cannot. I sent no soldiers to Clermont. I have done nothing to stoke the tensions between Orlais and Enasan. What does she have to say for what they have done?”

What could Ellana say? She dug deep. She needed a truth that was not quite the truth.

“Twenty-seven years ago, you put a sword in my hand at Skyhold,” she said, never taking her eyes off of Cassandra. “And you changed my life forever that day. There was never a way back for me to the life I knew. Never. I had to find a way forward. For me - for my people. Yes, I have used the power you gave me to help the elves. Yes, it is that power that let me spare Solas’s life, and perhaps that was not the most moral choice, or the one you wanted me to make. But I have never once used that power to harm the other peoples of Thedas. I want what is best for all of us. I always have. I always will. Whatever is happening with the Veil - and I truly do not know what it was that you sensed, Vivienne - it is not something to be afraid of.”

She wasn’t lying. She wasn’t. The magic was stable. It affected the Veil nowhere else in Thedas. They were doing it so slowly that Ellana herself knew she may never live to see it fall. She was not lying.

Cassandra looked at her for a long while. She had a gaze as steady and as piercing as the sword she carried for so many years. Then she looked away, and stood.

“I will not support Absolon Valmont for the throne of Orlais,” she said. “Not while all of this remains in doubt.”

Ellana started forward, half wanting to reach out for her friend.

“You cannot support de Pelletier. Cass -”

“I did not say I would support de Pelletier, either.” Cassandra’s voice was harsh. Edged with some kind of pain. “I think it best that you go, Ellana. You have no place here now. You are not Enasan’s ambassador - your daughter stands at the center of this controversy - and so does your husband.”

For the first time in the conversation, Ellana’s heart beat so fast it hurt. She turned to Vivienne again.

“You can’t share these suspicions. You can’t. You will start a war as swiftly as de Pelletier would. Even if you don’t support him all you’ll do is feed people like him.”

In Vivienne’s eyes, too, there was a kind of pain that Ellana couldn’t unravel in her own haze.

“I am well aware of the weight of these accusations. I am no common court gossip. But whoever sits on Celene’s throne must know - and they will have questions, my dear. Questions you need to be prepared to answer better than you did this evening.”

Ellana looked between the two of them. Neither of them spoke. There was a fathomless gulf between them now. Cassandra and Vivienne on one side. Ellana on the other. She made a curt half-bow in their direction.

“Divine Victoria. Grand Enchanter.”

It was spiteful, maybe, calling them by their titles as she left. But she didn’t mean it as spite. She knew they were not her friends in that moment. And she was done lying for the night.

Ellana should not have been surprised to find Briala leaning against a wall around the corner as she left, her hands laced loosely together. Her mouth was set in a grim line.

“I take it you heard?” Ellana asked.

“Madame de Fer and the Divine know that every wall in the Winter Palace has eyes and ears. It was a little undignified at my age, maybe, to be one of those eyes and ears - but these are desperate times after all.”

Ellana felt like she was vibrating from her toes to the crown of her head. Buzzing with fear, agitation, replaying snippets of words over and over again with no rhyme or reason.

“I am surprised they did not invite you in,” she said, mostly without thinking. She wasn’t sure what her real thoughts were.

“I am not. If they had their way, elves would never be in that room. The room where things happen, where they are decided.”

“That is unfair.” Still, she jumped to defend them. This was a passing moment. Everything would be clear in time.

“Is it? Has Divine Victoria allowed elves to become Chantry Mothers? Would Vivienne not have seen your daughter taken from your arms when she was eight years old?”

Ellana looked away.

“I need to return to Enasan,” she said.

“Yes. When the Divine comes out against Valmont and de Pelletier there will be chaos. Whoever comes out of that chaos alive would do well to imprison you or worse. I would not see that happen. My agents can escort you, if you like.”

Of all the people to be her friend that night, in that moment, Briala was not quite the one Ellana had expected. Her voice went soft when she spoke again.

“Thank you, Briala.”

Briala did not respond with softness. She straightened up, away from the wall.

“Make no mistake - I would not see de Pelletier on the throne of Orlais. But I would not see it descend into the chaos of civil war again.” Briala angled her head now, and there was something - conciliatory in the gesture. “You, on the other hand, would do well to sow chaos in Orlais. If we are at war here - we cannot go to war with Enasan, whatever the accusations against you are. But I must tell you now - my agents would oppose yours at every turn.”

There was weight behind the word accusations. Briala heard that part too, of course. Strange that she did not seem more angry, or surprised. Perhaps she did not believe Vivienne. Or - she was the Briala who had once controlled the eluvians, whose greatest anger was always that no one did enough for their people - perhaps… Still, it felt like the moment one fencer saluted another with her blade. This was a temporary truce.

“I would expect no less,” Ellana said.

She waited until morning to leave. Slipping out by night felt guilty. But sitting in the carriage Briala procured for her, feeling the thin morning light falling through the open curtains on her face, Ellana felt like the night before hadn’t really ended. She kept seeing that pain in Cassandra and Vivienne’s eyes over and over again. The sun was high in the sky before she could name it. Disappointment. Betrayal. She was on her way home, but she kept looking back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always for reading, everyone! Next up: the family reunites back in Enasan. That will go well, right?
> 
> Big thanks as usual to WardsAreFunctioning for listening to me whine about this chapter for a month.
> 
> Prompts, comments and general discussion more than welcome here or on my [Tumblr](https://buttsonthebeach.tumblr.com/)!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's get the Lavellan family reunited, shall we?
> 
> This reunion does include some smut for Ellana and Solas, at the very end of the chapter. You can easily skip this is you stop reading when Solas says "Let us speak of this tomorrow." There is nothing else left in the chapter after that, if smut is not your thing.

Solas had never expected to become a particularly domestic person - at least not right after uthenera. So many simple domestic tasks in Elvhenan were the province of magic - or slaves. Washing dishes, preparing meals, mending clothes - at first these things were part of what made him resent the changed world he woke in. Now he found more peace in them, if not outright enjoyment. There was something meditative about going through the same routines, of having work for his hands when his mind was busy.

It helped that he had a home now, of course. Not a castle in the mountains. Not a tent in the wilderness. A small, snug home, where he’d raised his daughter. Where he woke each day to his wife.

He needed the meditation of waking, stretching, bathing, and then heading to the kitchen to slice fruit, to check if the bread was still fresh or if he would need to send Ashara to the bakery for more, to activate the fire rune and begin heating a pan so he could cook eggs. He needed that meditation because Ashara had returned from her journey the day before with that grim and cagey air she always had when she was lying. He needed it because Ellana was still in Orlais, because when he’d shaped the Fade to resemble the seaside villa where they’d taken an overdue honeymoon, she’d still clung to him like he was the only thing holding him down to earth. He needed the meditation because he had the sense that a hundred threads were slipping through his fingers now, that great events were taking place but he was not in the center of them, not in a position to influence them, and that rankled him, and then it rankled him that he was so bothered, still prideful, still power-hungry after all this time -

He cut the apples with more force than necessary.

He had not been at his preparations long when he heard Sylvio’s light step approaching. He smiled even before he turned around, the better to ensure that the child would detect no trace of his anger and frustration.

“On dhea, da’len. Did you sleep well?”

Sylvio only regarded him with wide, frightened eyes. So it was to be one of those days, when words were too much for him.

“You do not have to answer if you do not wish. Here - your breakfast is ready.”

Sylvio picked at the apples, the cheese, and the fresh bread. He regarded the fried egg Solas added to his plate with considerable alarm. Solas himself did not feel particularly hungry, but he took the plate he had prepared for Ashara instead, and made a great show of eating it, hoping to tempt the boy into the same. Sylvio ate his bread, finally, and just as Solas was about to reach out and sense whether or not Ashara was still sleeping, he felt an unmistakable surge of arcane energy, enough that it made his whole body prickle, coming from the garden. When his initial shock faded, he was glad. She was regaining her connection to the Fade, it would seem.

“Ashara is in the garden. Would you like to help me clean up breakfast, and then join her?”

Sylvio nodded. Solas praised him as he helped clean and that seemed to steady the boy. Everyone, no matter how young, liked to feel useful. Like there was something they could control.

When they went into the garden, they found Ashara dressed in loose, simple robes, a sheen of sweat already on her brow despite the early morning chill, her staff already whirling around her. Solas recognized the exercise at once. She cast, cast, cast - just simple arcane bolts channeled through her staff - allowed a field of magical energy to build around her - and then dispelled all of it. It was rather like tensing and releasing a muscle. It was an exercise they used with mages in the middle years of their training, a way for them to build awareness of ambient magic, of the power of their spells and dispells, of control. She couldn’t cast too many bolts too quickly, or she could exceed her own skill at dispelling, or fail to catch them before they struck something.

Solas led Sylvio to a bench and gestured for him to sit. The boy’s eyes widened again, this time in awe, as he watched Ashara work. She was doubtless aware of their presence, but made no move to acknowledge them. Good. She was focused. He began to watch her with a teacher’s eyes, rather than a father’s. Her form was good, her grip on her staff even and balanced, each movement beginning with her hips - she held her shoulders too high and tense though. She varied the intensity and pace of each set, though they still built steadily. She only missed a stray bolt every now and then, and even that bounced harmlessly off of a barrier of fire she’d set a fair distance away. Her dispels were clean and precise, strong enough that he felt them tug on his own aura. He was pleased - as a teacher and a father. When she finished a set, he spoke.

“Again - only this time, redirect the ambient magic to a barrier around yourself, rather than dispelling it. Let your bolts hit their target.”

She glanced at him, nodded, took a breath, and then began again.

She was good at this, too - though not quite as good as she was at the first exercise. Some stray magic still crackled around her after each set and when he drew on it himself and began testing the barrier she was weaving around herself, he found it uneven in places. Vulnerable to shattering. She fixed the weak spots as he found them - sweating more now - but that meant her attacks slowed, and that there was less ambient energy for her to draw on to shore up the barrier - and that meant that it eventually broke with a resounding crack that made Sylvio jump on the bench beside him.

Ashara relaxed her stance and turned to them, out of breath. She looked irritated.

“Your barriers have gotten better,” he said. It was true. It had been the most difficult foundational technique for her to master as a young mage, and the fact that she built one from ambient energy and held it against his assault while still casting other spells was impressive for her.

“It still broke,” she said, voice flat.

“It is a difficult technique,” he said. “And one I imagine you have had little occasion to practice. It is mainly useful in combat.”

Her expression darkened. She turned on her heel and with that motion brought her staff around and slung a fierce blast of frost at the barrier of fire she’d put up before to catch her bolts. It shattered under the force of that one blow. Solas raised his eyebrows. He had not watched Ashara do anything but the simplest magic in a year or two, he realized. She was strong. She breathed and returned to a resting position facing them, centering herself, and he saw the new scars on her forearms. He saw in that instant what the templar had seen that day in Clermont. The daughter who had taken some of her first steps in that very garden was grown - and she was dangerous.

“Lucius helped, you know,” she said. “With the barriers.”

He couldn’t help the irritation that flared in him at the name, even if it was childish, as Ellana so often reminded him. He could tell from the challenge in Ashara’s eyes that she wanted him to be irritated, anyway.

“Pay him my compliments, then.”

“I will.” Then, after a pause: “I was able to walk the Fade again last night. I saw him. I tried finding Mamae, but I couldn’t and - he was calling.”

Maybe this was the source of her strange mood. Lucius. He’d thought Ashara over her infatuation with him, but perhaps he’d said or done something to unbalance her again. His irritation burned hotter at the thought.

“It was nice. Seeing him.” Ashara trailed off there. Then she looked to Sylvio as if noticing him for the first time. “Savhalla, Syvlio. Did you enjoy watching?” He nodded, at first tentatively, and then harder, his thick black hair waving. Ashara gave him a half-smile and approached, holding her staff. “Do you want to feel it?”

Sylvio ran his hand along the polished wood and gasped, no doubt feeling the energy that still ran through it. Ashara laughed, and Sylvio gave her his first smile of the day.

“Maybe we should go to the park today,” she said. “Would you like that?”

“What’s a park?” he asked.

“Well, now we have to go.”

“There is breakfast, before we set out,” Solas said.

Ashara shook her head. “I’m fine.”

That was his first indication that something was still wrong.

While he knew Ashara was still actively practicing the skill of drawing energy and sustenance directly from the Fade, he still had not known her to turn down a bite to eat. And there was something forced about her smiles on their way to the park - and if he managed to catch a glimpse of her when she thought he was not looking, the smiles were gone entirely. It wasn’t that he expected her to be totally fine - no one who had experienced what she had would be in such a short time - it was that he suspected there was something new. Something different that plagued her. It worried him.

The park was not a long walk from their home. It was a wide, green space, left mostly natural, and kept trim by goats that lived in the surrounding houses. It was dotted with various statues - some abstract, and some depicting various famous figures from elven history. There were Garahel and Isseya, heroes of the Fourth Blight - Grand Enchanter Fiona, leader of the mage rebellion - many of the Emerald Knights - Shartan - various Dalish Keepers of great renown. Time and again, artists had offered to sculpt one of Ellana, but she continued to decline. He hoped that one day she would give in, and that she too would stand there, a model for elven children, a symbol of all their people could be.

There was also a small pond with a natural rock formation near it that naturally attracted children, who played at being those heroes of legend, or at being griffons, or at being Grey Wardens, or at being cats. Some of the parents or other caregivers were nearby, and some weren’t. The city was a safe place, by and large, and while they had never let Ashara roam free, many parents did - remember, perhaps, their own childhoods as slaves, or members of an alienage, or Dalish children running wild in the woods, and wanting either the same or something different for their own children.

When they arrived at that rock formation, Sylvio was hesitant to join the other children at play, but eventually he did, even if he was still uncertain, still slow to smile, and spent a good deal of time hovering on the edge of one group, watching them. Solas imagined he had probably seen few places like this in Tevinter. Few elven children who could play with such safety and such abandon, shrieking as they kicked at the waters of the pond, and made mudpies, and climbed the rocks. He and Ashara took a seat on one of the stone benches that ringed the pond, a short distance from Sylvio, and smiled at him whenever he glanced their way.

“I can’t help but wonder what will become of him now,” Ashara said after a while. “I know we wrote to his relatives in Tevinter - I know that being with family is important - but he should grow up here. Livia worked so hard to get him here and now -” A short, pained breath escaped her. Solas’s chest hurt to hear it.

“It is possible that your mother and I will be able to arrange for his family to move here. I agree that that is the best solution.”

Another joyous shriek pierced the air. Ashara winced. Solas could feel the nervous vibration of her aura and sent a soothing flicker towards it. Perhaps she’d heard such a shriek that day in Clermont.

“I was so lucky to grow up here,” Ashara said when the noise died down. “And I’m so lucky to be alive. I sit here on this beautiful day and that’s all I can think. I’m alive and they aren’t.”

Solas thought at once to those first few days out of uthenera - of the choking weight of the Veil, of the horrific memory of Elvhenan collapsing in on itself, of castles falling from the air, of sundered paths, of children screaming for their parents, of freed slaves he promised sanctuary to.  _ I am alive and they are not. _ Had he not thought those exact same words - had he not let them guide him, almost to the point of destruction, in those first few years?

“There is no rhyme or reason to such things, Ashara,” he said at last. “You are not guilty of survival. No one in such a situation is. You must remind yourself of that whenever the feeling grows strong.”

And again, that grim, cagey look crossed Ashara’s face. But this time, she looked him straight in the eye.

“I’m joining the army, Papae,” she said.

Of all the things she could have said, that was the last Solas expected. He was sure his shock showed on his face. Ashara - a soldier? A battlemage? She’d never shown such an inkling before, not even as a little girl. She loved magic for its beauty, its variety, its mystery - not its destruction. Before he could even finish processing the thought, she went on.

“I went yesterday and asked. They want to evaluate me soon. That’s why I was practicing this morning.” Ashara turned on the bench, the better to see him, gesturing widely with her hands. She was agitated now. “I have to do something. Something to honor the fact that I survived. The fact that they died either serving this country or trying to make a home here. I have to.”

And did Solas not know that impulse, too?  _ I have to make this right _ . That impulse had nearly led him to ripping out the Veil, to creating a world where Ashara would never have existed. But he looked at his daughter - so like him and yet so unlike him - and he knew that was not where this impulse would lead her. He had a moment of pride then. She did not want to give into fear or self-pity. She wanted to make a difference. She wanted to honor her companions. That moment of pride was followed, equally, by a father’s fear.

“Ashara - if Cassandra can’t help ease the tension in Orlais, there is a good chance of war. You would not be a theoretical soldier.”

“I’m not signing up to be a theoretical soldier.”

Solas let his attention drift to the children once more. There weren’t quite so many statues here, when Ashara was their age. But he’d still brought her here to this pond, to these rocks. Had crouched in the mud with her and helped her make her own mudpies. Had carried her home, a warm, tired weight in his arms, at the end of a long afternoon. He turned back to Ashara. Her face was full of worry and resolve - but it was not the face of a child. That had not always been easy for him to accept - but he had no other choice. He let out a breath he’d been holding.

“Then there is every chance that you will face Orlesian chevaliers - archers - swordsmen - templars, even, if the Chantry becomes involved. They will try to kill you, da’vhenan. And you will have to kill them.”

Another shriek from the children - another wince from Ashara. They both found Sylvio again, wordlessly, in the cluster of children, and saw a tentative smile on his face, as they all crouched around an empty bird’s nest one of them had found nearby.

“They already tried to kill me,” Ashara said after a moment. “And I already had to kill them.”

He took her hand and squeezed it once, hard. Solas tried not to think of all the terrible things that could wait outside that moment. He tried to think only of the wind in the trees, and the sound of the children playing, and the fact that soon Ellana would be home.

*

Ellana was sore and tired by the time she crossed the border into Enasan. The carriage bounced terribly, and so she’d barely slept. They stopped only to send two ravens ahead - one to the council and one to Solas. She knew she would not sleep well enough in the carriage to reach out to him in the Fade. It felt like so long since she’d seen him. She longed for him. Fiercely. Longed to rest her head on his chest and feel safe, secure, to sit in their bedroom and talk about the world. She missed her best and truest partner. She needed him, watching the Orlesian countryside roll by. She was so alone.

Of course, emissaries from the council were waiting for her when she reached the capital. Nervous looking young elves who straightened up at the sight of her and said: “We were instructed to bring you to the council at once.”

“Yes, fine. Let’s go.”

She was more dismissive than she needed to be, and she cringed, inwardly. She was not only tired and sore, but grimey, and sick of the clothes she was wearing. Their procession from the outskirts of the city didn’t have its usual effect on her: a combination of gratitude, awe, and calm. Seeing a city full of elves living free and prosperous, seeing buildings shaped by hardworking hands and magic alike, a fusion of metal and wood and stone, hearing so many different dialects and languages - seeing all of that and knowing she had a hand in it was usually one of the highlights of her day. It was all worth it. Everything she endured, everything she fought - it was all worth it. Her life meant something.

On that day, seeing all of it knotted her stomach.  _ I will fail them. I may have already failed them. _

Everyone else was assembled by the time she arrived - Abelas, Mateo, Arlanal, Caralina. Ilriane was still in Orlais, but one of her deputies was there, a young man whose name Ellana couldn’t recall. They met not in the formal council chambers where they heard petitions and made announcements, but in a smaller antechamber on the ground floor of the grand building, outfitted with large stuffed chairs Josephine had sent them so many years ago, when this was the only room the council had. When the city outside was little more than a village, growing by the day.

“Welcome, Mistress Lavellan.” Caralina was the first to greet her, her voice smooth and calm, with only a hint of the Antivan accent she’d picked up as a girl in her training with the Crows, before working as a spy for Enasan. She was the second spymaster in their country’s history. Ellana did not know her as well as her predecessor. “I am the one who insisted on meeting with you at once. I trust it is not an imposition.”

There was no hint of a question, there. Caralina didn’t care if it was an imposition or not. Ellana seated herself.

“It might have been nice to take a bath first,” Ellana said. Caralina gave her a thin-lipped smile.

“The news you sent is grave,” Arlanal said as Mateo helped her into a seat. The Keeper who saw to their arcane affairs was getting on in years. The purple lines of Dirthamen’s vallaslin were faint now - not the stark violet they’d been the first time Ellana met her, at an Arlathvhen that seemed to be several lifetimes ago, now. “I dispatched some of my finest arcane researchers to the site of the attack at once when we heard, under the guidance of Caralina’s scouts. There are still Orlesian forces in the area, so they could not get into Clermont itself, but they were able to take readings of the Veil in the surrounding areas. It shows signs of the deliberate weakening we have conducted in other parts of Enasan - and yet we never authorized such modifications in the area.”

Ellana had had time to contemplate that exact question on her long carriage ride.

“I assume it was an effect of my daughter’s magic that day. She is no full-fledged rift mage, but she has learned enough from her father that she may have done something by accident, in her panic.”

Ashara. Ellana had to take a deep breath. She was here, in the city, a scant two or three miles away in the house she’d grown up in. She wanted this meeting over with. She wanted to go and see her.

“As do I,” Arlanal agreed. “Your bondmate agreed that we should sent rift mages to the site to repair the damage. They have been dispatched.”

She said the word  _ bondmate _ with a particular inflection that made Ellana smile inwardly. Solas and Arlanal did not get along. It had to be difficult for a Dalish Keeper to accept that, while she was the official arcane advisor of the new elven homeland, the Dread Wolf was going to insist on stopping by her office at all hours with his own plans and ideas. Ellana had apologized more than once on Solas’s behalf for his - less than diplomatic nature. It wasn’t a truly contentious partnership - more an exasperated one.

“That’s not the true concern at this point.” It was Ilriane’s deputy. He cleared his throat nervously when everyone’s eyes went to him. “Mistress Tabris sent her own raven confirming what Mistress Lavellan said. Divine Victoria has formally rejected Absolon Valmont as a candidate for the Orlesian throne - and given that she knows what we know about the Veil, we can only assume that whoever she does support will soon share that knowledge.”

The room went quiet. Ellana pinched her forehead and sighed. She remembered the conversation that took place in this very room, two decades before. Ashara a tiny, swaddled babe in her arms, whimpering from time to time in her sleep. Solas at her side, explaining his plan. The true restoration of the Elvhen people, at no danger to the rest of Thedas. They would use Falon’Din’s orb to slowly weaken the Veil, over years and years, so that Enasan would have time to grow and become strong, to cement its place on the grand stage of Thedas’s politics, to gain allies - so slowly that the world would change, and eventually, when the Veil did disintegrate within the boundaries of their country, people would understand.

This had always been their greatest fear.

“This will mean war,” Abelas said. His voice, as always, was calm, commanding, and certain. “Our forces will need to increase. And we will require a wartime commander.”

“Mistress Tabris thinks that there’s still a chance for peace -”

“A chance, da’len, that I am unwilling to take.”

The deputy looked chastened. Ellana remembered all too well how it felt that day in the Temple of Mythal, hearing him call her a shadow. He was a big, imposing man, even out of his Sentinel armor.

“Give Ilriane time, Abelas,” Ellana said, even if she felt the hollowness of her own words. Abelas gave her a long look, but said nothing.

From there she recounted her trip to Orlais in greater detail, including her conversation with Vivienne and Cassandra, as close to word for word as possible, hoping someone else would notice a detail she missed, something they could spin to make it seem like what Vivienne uncovered was a misunderstanding and nothing more. They discussed the potential of closing their borders, of rooting out any potential spies who may have even then been trying to find out more information than what Vivienne already knew. The truth was that, outside of the people currently in the room, only a handful of other people knew exactly what was going on with the Veil in Enasan. Any potential spies from Orlais or Tevinter or Ferelden or the Free Marches would have to be mages, and they’d have to go to certain locations to gather the information necessary, and they could certainly try to restrict access to those areas, one way or another -

They had been talking for nearly an hour when it occurred to Ellana that she didn’t actually belong in this meeting. She had no official position here. She thought of what Abelas said about a wartime commander. While it was true that Enasan’s council made most decisions jointly, and that this had worked for the last two decades, it was also true that they had made provisions in their founding documents for a wartime commander to have a more direct and complete control over the country, to prevent dangerous political stalemates while men and women died in bloody fields.

Was it possible that command would fall to her?

Did she want it to?

Ellana knew only one thing for certain: she wanted a bath, and she wanted to see her bondmate and her daughter.

“If there’s nothing else, I think I will excuse myself,” she said when there was a lull. “You know where to find me, if anything comes up.”

They let her go with little other comment. She was certain they would not part ways yet. Caralina and Mateo were deep in a conversation about embedding some of her scouts and spies within trade caravans crisscrossing the country, and Arlanal and Abelas were discussing something in rapid Elvhen. She felt relief, stepping outside the small, dark room, but also anxiety. What else would they discuss? She had no aides who would brief her on it later, as they had if she missed a meeting when she was still Chief Ambassador. She may never know what they talked about.

This was all nonsense. She was angry with herself for her own indecision. She wasn’t prone to anxiety, not really. Fear, yes. Self-doubt, yes. Both of those emotions were useful in their ways. But this pointless, nagging worry, this uncertainty within herself - it served nothing.

She would go home and it would be fine.

She decided to walk home, tired as she was. She looked around the city and she felt a tinge of the awe she usually did. She got one or two looks passing through the market. People who recognized her but didn’t get the chance to act on it, most likely. She kept up her determined stride. It was good to stretch her legs, to smell the cinnamon and cloves and allspice from a nearby cart selling roasted nuts. Her stomach ached, but she didn’t want to wait long enough to get some. There would be food at home.

Her heart picked up when she turned down the quiet, tree-lined road, at last, that lead to that home. In times past there were few other houses in the area, and while there were one or two now, theirs was still set back enough from the main road that it was fairly private. Their small, unassuming house, with its little garden, and the steps where Ashara tripped and skinned her knees once. She felt the comforting rush of Solas’s wards as she walked up the steps - was he not at home? He rarely set the more powerful ones if he was - and then closed her eyes to better enjoy the creak of their front door as it opened.

“Mamae?”

But even that familiar sound couldn’t compare to the sound of her daughter’s voice.

Ashara emerged from the study just as Ellana exited their entryway, and they met in the living room, and Ellana didn’t have a chance to even look at her daughter, not really, before they were embracing. Ashara smelled like clean soap, and under that a faint, chemical scent - magic. She’d been practicing something. It explained the loose, soft training clothes Ellana was abruptly aware of under her hand where it clutched Ashara’s shoulder. She could almost swear her daughter was taller, too - and as always, she bent down to hug her mother, like she was trying to be small again, and erase the five or six inches that separated them now.

“Oh, da’asha,” Ellana managed at last, when she felt her throat loosen. “I am so happy you are safe.”

Ashara squeezed her once more, and then stepped back. Ellana looked her over. Was she thinner? Had she been eating? Her hair was pulled back in a braid. That was unusual. Her eyes were sad.

“Is your father out?”

“Yes. He took Sylvio to the park. I stayed behind to wait for you. Oh - Sylvio is the boy. The one I saved. He really likes the park now. He’d never been to one before.”

Yes - the boy whose mother’s body lay dead in a room in Halamshiral. The woman de Pelletier used so callously to provoke a reaction from her.

“You did well to save him. You were very brave.”

Somehow it was the wrong thing to say. Ashara looked away. It was so  _ good _ to see her, so good it hurt. Ellana wanted to reach out and hold her again. Here was a role she had never doubted, not since those exhausted, emotional first weeks after giving birth. She was Ashara’s mother and that made her feel lucky, and proud. Everything else could be fine as long as Ashara was, too.

“You look tired. And thin. Have you eaten?”

“Thanks for the compliment, Mamae.”

“Come into the kitchen. You only use that tone with me when you’re hungry. I know I am too. We’ll eat, and then you’ll make me a hot bath so I can finally wash.”

Ashara’s expression didn’t improve, but she did follow quietly into the kitchen. Ellana poked through the shelves, and then the enchanted icebox with its expensive runes, and found that it was better stocked than she expected. Solas didn’t keep a lot of food on hand if he was the only one eating it. Having Sylvio and Ashara there must have forced him to go out and buy more. Ellana found leftover salmon, already spiced and cooked, and some onions and leeks and potatoes, and rice to bring it all together. She activated the fire rune on their stove, and measured out the rice and the water, and set about boiling them, while Ashara sat at the nearby table, and drummed her fingers.

“What is the news from Orlais?” she asked finally.

Ellana sighed. It was inevitable that she would have to share her news all over again. “Come and help me chop these.”

Ashara did not complain, she noticed. She always tried to get out of helping with the cooking, opting for hovering nearby to steal bits of food instead. In fact, when she got out the cutting board and two knives, Ashara reached out and took them instead.

“Let me do it. You just got home. Sit down.”

Ellana raised her eyebrows, and tried to catch Ashara’s glance, but she kept her face turned resolutely towards the vegetables.

“If you insist, da’vhenan.”

She went and sat, groaning at once at how good it felt. Her right knee ached from her walk, and so did her right shoulder. She was always at risk of overusing her right arm, with her left hand gone. She longed again for her bath, and for Solas to be home so he could help soothe those aches.

“So? What is the news?”

Ashara was slowly peeling the onion, her fingers clumsy and unused to the task. Her tone was insistent.

“Cassandra has publicly announced that she will not support Absolon Valmont, who was our longtime choice. The main contender who remains is the man who orchestrated the attack in Clermont. She says she will not support him, either, but - things are not looking good.”

She didn’t say anything about their knowledge of the Veil. It would only upset Ashara more. She disagreed with what they were doing. She’d insisted that they reverse it, once she learned of the plan. She hadn’t asked about it in some time. Perhaps she assumed that her parents had listened to her. Perhaps she just didn’t want to know the truth.

“Will there be a war?” Ashara asked.

“I don’t know. I hope not. But - it is certainly possible.”

There was a silence then, broken only by the dull  _ thunk _ of Ashara’s knife as it hit the cutting board. The pieces of onion she cut were big and uneven, but Ellana didn’t want to correct her. She looked frustrated and worried as it was. She pushed the onions aside and began on the leek, taking it to the nearby sink to rinse away the dirt and grit from between the layers. When she returned to her cutting board, her cuts were more precise and methodical. She was worrying at her lower lip with her teeth.

“I don’t want you to worry, Ashara. There’s no reason for you to.”

Ashara made four more careful cuts. Then she swept the cut pieces of leek aside - started to pick up a potato - put it back down - and turned to her mother.

“I’m joining the army.”

Ellana was sure she’d heard her wrong. Ashara braced both her hands on the counter behind her.

“What?”

“I’m joining.”

Now Ellana knew she’d heard her right. Now Ellana’s blood ran cold.

“No.”

“What do you mean, no? I have to help. I have to.” Ashara’s voice was firm, her blue eyes steady. Ellana made a helpless gesture.

“But like this?”

“How else can I?” Ashara made the same gesture. “We can’t dream our way to victory. I can’t research my way to fixing it. I’m no healer. But I can throw a fireball with the rest of them. I’ve already proved that. I already went to the fort and passed my initial tests. They want to test me for the Dirth’ena Enasalin next.” She pushed away from the counter and stood up straight. “I’m joining, Mamae. It’s happening.”

Ashara on the field of battle - right up close, wielding a sword with no blade,as Vivienne had. Ashara who cried inconsolably the first time she saw a hare caught in one of her mother’s traps, who begged her father to make it move again, who didn’t want to eat the stew they made even though there was nothing else. Ashara, who had killed a templar in a veridium mine in Orlais two years ago, in self defense, and still lowered her eyes every time she spoke of it.

Ashara, her only child.

“No. You can’t.” Ellana stood, angry now. She traveled so long - hoped so hard - it was all supposed to be over. Her daughter was supposed to be  _ safe _ .

“Why not?” Ashara was angry now, too. Not bewildered anymore.

“Because I won’t allow it. This is a rash and foolish decision. You just went through a horrifying experience and you aren’t thinking clearly.”

“What do you mean, you won’t allow it?”

Ellana rose. She was dimly aware that she was clenching her hand into a fist, that her temple was beginning to throb, that she was tired and sore and overwrought from her own trials. But all of that paled in comparison to the horror she felt rising up her spine. Ashara would not fight. She could not fight. That world could never come to pass.

“You know what I mean. I will not allow you to do this.”

“ _ Allow _ me? I am not a child!”

“No, but I will not allow my only daughter to run off and join a war -”

“A war you always knew was coming?”

Ellana’s breath caught. The hot anger building in her gut cooled. She felt the way she did whenever an arrow hit her armor - stunned, breathless, and unable to fight back.

“Because you did, didn’t you?” Ashara went on. “You’ve always known this was coming. And you have sheltered me and protected me from it, and that’s what you want to keep doing. Well - Tamaris’s parents couldn’t protect him. And neither could Gwynne’s, or Livia’s, or Vito’s. And neither can you now. Not anymore.”

What poison those words were. Ellana could already feel them eating away at her.  _ Sweet girl, I already knew - have always known - that I could never really protect you. _ But she couldn’t make herself speak. She thought back to her meeting with the council. The idea of taking wartime command of their country. Of pushing pieces around on a war table that represented units of soldiers and mages - of one of those units being Ashara’s.

“I love our country, Mamae,” Ashara said. Her voice trembled a little. “I love our people. I have to do something to help them, to protect them. Just - say that you understand that. You went to war. You fought for what was right, once. Why shouldn’t I do the same?”

There was a pleading note in Ashara’s voice now. She wanted a blessing Ellana could not give.

“War is an ugly thing, Ashara. It can make you ugly. Yes, I went to war once, but killing things is what I was trained to do from the time I was thirteen. It was my only skill. And then I was Inquisitor and I had no choice but to fight. You - you are smart and well educated and talented and a Dreamer and a mage - you can’t throw your life away like this. I refuse to let you.”

Several looks flashed over Ashara’s face. Anger. Disbelief. Hurt. And then, finally, resolve.

“It isn’t your choice. It’s mine. And I’m joining the army.”

Ellana looked at her tall, serious daughter, standing barefoot in their kitchen, where she used to feed berries to her stuffed nug, insisting that the toy was hungrier than she was. How angry she would get, when her parents didn’t set out a plate for him, too.  _ Do you want him to starve? _ She was tall and serious, yes, but wasn’t she still that child inside? The one who only ever wanted to help? The one who saw the world with such clear and lovely innocence? And now she would willingly choose to become a trained killer?

“When your father comes home -” Ellana began, but there was no venom in her voice. She knew that look on her daughter’s face. This cause was lost.

“Papae already knows. He understands.”

Now the cold feeling was back - and the anger.

“Just - say that you respect my decision, Mamae. Please.”

Ellana closed her eyes and pinched her nose again. She tried to sort through the roaring in her mind. Only one refrain came back to her again and again: there was every chance that their country was going to war, and now her daughter was going to fight in it.

She had failed.

“Mamae?”

Ellana looked up. Ashara looked sad and scared now.

“I need to think about this, Ashara. I can’t pretend that I think this is a good idea. I can’t.”

Ashara’s eyes hardened, and she turned quietly back to her chopping, the knife louder than ever before.

By the time Solas returned home with a young child with brown skin and black hair, Ashara had cooked the vegetables, and added the salmon to the pan to warm it once more. She and Ashara had not spoken in the interim. Ellana had gone and sponged herself off and changed into fresh clothes, and pardoned herself when she nearly bumped into Ashara on her return, but that was all. She spent the rest of her energy trying to think of counterarguments that might sway Ashara, ways she could prevent her from joining, or ensure she was put in a unit unlikely to see action - debating whether or not she should write to Ilriane and find out the latest of what was happening in Orlais -

In short, by the time Solas returned, she was more tired, and more frustrated, and more lost than before.

“Vhenan.” The word was so heartfelt, and he was already extending his arms to embrace her, but Ellana only stiffened when he approached. He read her body language and did not try to embrace her, although he looked confused. “How was your journey?” His eyes flicked to Ashara, who still looked pensive and withdrawn, and then back to her.

“Tiring.” Ellana looked at the child at Solas’s side. His big eyes. They softened her, and she managed a smile for him, if not for her bondmate or her daughter. “You must be Sylvio. I am Ellana, Ashara’s mamae.”

He regarded her for a moment, then said, solemnly: “My mamae is dead.”

How her heart broke all over again, hearing that. “I know, da’len. I know.”

It was a quiet meal. Sylvio broke the tension for them, providing them with a conduit for conversation. None of them really spoke to each other, except to say  _ pass the rice _ or  _ will you get me water, too? _ Instead they asked him what he saw at the park, what he thought of Enasan, and what his favorite colors were. He seemed a little awed by all the attention - and deeply uncertain of the salmon - but it was better than the alternative.

They kept it up for the rest of the day - until it was time for bed, of course, and Ashara pointedly said that she was retiring early because she needed to report early for some kind of assessment with the head battlemage trainer. 

Solas went to help Sylvio ready himself for bed, and Ellana was left with plenty of time to sit in their bedroom and fume, silently.

Ashara wanted to be a soldier.

Solas gave her his blessing - without waiting to see what his own bondmate thought.

Cassandra and Vivienne looked at her with such disappointment in their eyes.

And her fucking knee still hurt.

She spoke the moment she heard Solas enter the room.

“Ashara came to you and said she wanted to join the army with a war with Orlais on the horizon, and you  _ agreed _ ?”

Solas tucked his hands carefully behind his back.

“Vhenan,” he said, gently, not quite a question or a statement. How  _ dare _ he stand there like that, so calm, so impassive -

“Ashara will never make a good soldier. She questions authority, she acts out impulsively, she is so kind and so compassionate that she would sooner offer a downed chevalier a hand up than kill him. I barely made it through a handful of days thinking she was dead. How will I survive an entire war?”

Solas took a step closer, and said it again, just as gently: “Vhenan.”

Infuriating, stubborn, awful man -

“You didn’t even  _ wait _ for me, or consider how I would feel about this, did you? You just saw in her the same idiot impulse to chase after some ideal version of the world - there is no glory in war, Solas. Nothing in it that would ease her suffering. You of all people should know that.”

That fractured the impassive mask on his face. It made his eyebrows drop low over his eyes. Good.

“I do, and I said as much. But she already killed those men, Ellana. She already watched her friends die. She is haunted by their faces. She doesn’t want glory. She wants justice. And while war is never glorious, it can be just. There is honor in fighting for what is right. In fighting for a cause. How can  _ you _ deny that?”

Just as it had with Ashara, her anger deflated. Her temper always had run hot - and yet she couldn’t make it last. And whenever it was over, she felt a little silly. A little melodramatic. He sensed that in her, and took the final step to close the distance, and cupped her face in his hands, and said the word one more time:

“Vhenan.”

This time, she let him hold her. She was aware once again that no one had held her through anything that happened. Not through those awful days of fearing that Ashara was dead, not through the machinations and intrigues of Halamshiral. She sank into his embrace. She was still agitated, deep inside. She felt like she still hadn’t truly come home yet. Everything was unsettled. But she let him hold her, and she let that part drift further and further away.

When Solas loosened his hold on her, it was only so she could tilt her face up and kiss him. A quick kiss, but another anchoring touch nonetheless. They leaned their foreheads together when it was over.

“Let us speak of this tomorrow,” Solas said. “You are tired, as am I. I forgot how exhausting it is, chasing a little one around the park.”

Ellana lay on her back while Solas readied himself for bed, her arm across her stomach. When Solas slid under the sheets, he hooked an arm around her waist and pulled her closer to him, tugging until she complied and rolled onto her side. She still felt stiff, but he was warm and big behind her, and he left feather-light kisses on the nape of her neck.

“I missed you,” he said. His breath on her skin made her shiver. “Even after so many years together, I wanted you here with me instead of out there.”

Ellana’s anger was real and heavy in her throat - but she made a conscious choice to swallow it. There was nothing to say that she hadn’t already said. And so much of her anger was really exhaustion and fear. She took his hand.

“I missed you, too.”

For a while they drifted in that fuzzy, indistinct place between sleeping and waking. Idle thoughts drifted through her head. How long had the council met after she left? Had they remembered to clean out the pan when dinner was done? Would Ashara really go through with this insane plan? Then Solas rolled away, onto his back, and Ellana followed, needing his warmth and closeness, feeling again the weight of all that shit weighing her down. She threw a leg over his - and felt at once the subtle bulge between his legs.

“Vhenan,” she said, exasperation in her tone, even as she left her leg resting there. He wasn’t fully hard yet. Just swollen up. She could see his smirk when he turned to face her.

“I did say I missed you.”

She sighed, but stayed close. She weighed whether or not she had the energy for this. She hesitated just long enough that he kissed her forehead and said: “You are under no obligation, ma’lath. I know you are tired. Today was a trying day.”

She kissed him instead of replying - a kiss she meant to be conciliatory at first, but he hummed when their lips met, and she let the kiss linger, and then his hands were tight on her back, and then on her ass, and if there wasn’t exactly heat in her belly there was a definite longing, a desire to be close to him, to feel loved and secure.

“Yes?” he asked when they broke apart.

“Yes,” she said. Then, a moment later. “I want you to be in control tonight.”

They’d had many nights when the opposite was the norm - but it wasn’t what she wanted in that moment. Solas nodded, and put his lips to her ear.

“Roll over, then. Onto your stomach. Bury your face.”

She complied, felt his weight shift on the bed. He was behind her - over her - pushing up her long night shirt - kissing down the length of her spine - pulling her smalls down - and then he was sitting back, rubbing both of his hands up and down her back.

“Relax, ma’asha. Breathe.”

She did. In, out. In, out. He kneaded her back in long, even strokes. She let out a shuddering sigh. There was a pinch of arousal between her legs, but her eyes were heavy.

“You’ll put me to sleep like this,” she murmured.

And then one of Solas’s hands was between her legs, dipping into her folds, seeking and finding the bud of her clit like an arrow. She sucked in a breath.

“And like that?”

She humped her hips forward gently against his fingers.

“That might work.”

He made her come so hard she couldn’t breathe - two fingers in her cunt, his thumb against her clit, all three buzzing with a vibrating current, and his other hand wound tight in her hair, tugging just enough with each spasm that she could feel it in her scalp. It was  _ good _ . She was so full of liquid, pulsing heat. She felt boneless. He kept massaging her, inside and out, even when she was done. Her cunt twitched and twitched around his fingers.

“Ready?” he asked.

She made a happy, content sound in her throat. He ran his fingers along the seam of her sex, testing and probing.

“Let me get the oil.”

It happened, sometimes, that she still wasn’t wet enough even after she came. It was fine. The oil was a treat all its own - warm and slippery. Anticipation built when she heard the pop of the cork coming out - she tensed, waiting for his touch - and when it came he’d heated his fingers and she groaned to feel how hot and wet they were as he spread it all over her sex. And then anticipation again - and then the quiet, slick sound of flesh on flesh as he oiled himself.

“You are so beautiful,” he said. His voice had a breathless edge. “Perhaps I ought to simply come like this, on your back.”

“I want you,” she said, lifting her hips. Then, with just a single pleading note: “Please?”

She could make him beg for a long time - had made him beg for a long time - but somehow he always struggled to resist her when she did. She felt his hands on her hips, still a little sticky from the oil, as he lifted her higher, and then felt the blunt pressure of his cock at her entrance. He pushed in slowly, his width stretching her, a sweet burn. It was all she could think about with her eyes shut, her face half buried in the pillow, her ass in the air. How good he felt. He made a gutted sound when he was all the way inside.

“You take me so well,” he said, pumping his hips just a little, keeping himself deep. “Oh, ma’asha, you feel so good.”

Somehow, that was the best thing he could have said. It was a simple, elemental truth. She tightened herself around him and heard him hiss in pleasure.

“Is it possible for me to take you poorly?” she murmured - and then started at the smart of his hand slapping her ass.

“Hush,” he said, his voice filled with warmth. “Let me appreciate you as you deserve.”

He moved after that, slow and certain, pulling out all the way and then pressing back in, bottoming out, pulling back, until he couldn’t take it, until he had to wind one hand in her hair again and fuck her hard. That was perfect, too. So fast, so overwhelming, so many feelings, so many sounds - there was no room for anything but the sound of his grunts, her own harsh breath, the thick, lovely friction of him driving home over and over again, giving her the kind of pleasure that didn’t mount into another climax, but just filled her up, and lingered, until his own finally burst with a heartfelt groan. He plunged himself deep, and she felt him spend himself, and she lived in that moment only for the quiet, happy, helpless sounds he made as he came.

Solas placed more kisses on her shoulder when he was done, lingering there until he softened and slipped away. Ellana winced when she rolled onto her side once more, as he fetched her a rag. As much as she loved being taken from behind, and as much as Solas tried to support her, it was still difficult with only one hand. Her wrist and shoulder hurt. But Solas knew that, and when he returned with the rag, and she’d cleaned up their mess, he rubbed her shoulder.

“Better?” he asked when he was done. She knew he didn’t mean only the shoulder. So she took stock: she was still tired, and anxiety still wormed its way through the back of her mind, and none of their problems would be gone in the morning… but he was here. Her heart. She was pleasantly spent. And she was warm and safe, and so was their daughter, just down the hall.

“Better,” she said, as they burrowed further into the covers, as they fit their bodies together the way they had on a hundred hundred nights over the years. She would fall asleep taking stock of the simple things. There was time for the rest in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompts, suggestions, comments and general discussion more than welcome here or on my [Tumblr](https://buttsonthebeach.tumblr.com/). As always, thank you for reading!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! For anyone interested, I wrote a one-shot from Lucius's POV on the early events of this fic, including his first meeting with Ashara in the Fade. I may post it to my one-shot collection eventually - I may even incorporate it into a later chapter of this fic - but for anyone curious to read it right now, [click here](https://buttsonthebeach.tumblr.com/post/173046611886/prompt-how-did-lucius-feel-when-he-heard-ashara)!
> 
> I was also lucky enough to commission the amazing Hansaera to draw Lucius, Claudia, and Ashara as they appear at the end of "Awakened," which you can see on Saera's blog [here](http://hansaera.tumblr.com/post/172518722851/lucius-talvas-ashara-lavellan-and-claudia-naevar)!

Mamae was being ridiculous. That much was obvious. Ashara stewed on the thought all day, through lunch and dinner and her (entirely unnecessary) comment that she was going to bed early so she could head to the fort first thing. Then she lay in bed and continued to stew on it. She had expected resistance from her father, if anyone. He’d barely wanted to let her go to Tevinter under Uncle Dorian’s care, and he’d hardly let her out of his sight in waking or in the Fade after everything that happened with Falon’Din. Yet he was the one who’d expressed his concern, watched her with worried eyes, and then accepted her decision. How could Mamae have so quickly jumped to panic and anger and accusations? To treating her like she was a child?

_ You are a child _ , some part of her whispered.  _ Only a child cares what her mother thinks. _

She wondered, sometimes, if that voice was Falon’Din. If some part of him still lingered in her mind. Something did, obviously, or she would not have known the blood magic she used to save her life. Her thumb pressed on the scar.

Everyone had doubts, though. Everyone had a voice that told them they weren’t enough. If hers felt more present right now than ever before, it was only natural.

Her thumb pressed down harder.

She found it difficult to sleep.

Eventually she rose and went out to the study, a magelight cradled in her hand, and spent the night reading an Andrastian history of the arcane warrior discipline, taking notes on a sheet of paper she found lying around about how it compared with what she’d read about the ancient practices of Dirth’ena Enasalin. She tried as many of the techniques as she could, though she lacked the proper equipment to practice summoning a spirit blade. She hoped that wasn’t what the trainer wanted to assess in the morning. Maybe she could explain, and ask if she could have time to craft a blade and practice on her own -

She woke to gray morning light and a crick in her neck, and a blanket tucked around her shoulders. She’d gone to the chaise and laid down at some point. She didn’t remember the blanket. When the sleepy fuzz dropped from her eyes, she noticed that it was slipping off, and the chill was what had woken her. Her chest felt tight, though she didn’t know why. What was there to feel anxious about? She wrapped herself more tightly in the blanket and closed her eyes, and tried to will the feeling away.

_ I am safe. I have nothing to be worried about. I am safe. _

It didn’t go away.

Eventually she focused her senses outside the study - the door was cracked - and realized she could hear her parents’ voices in the living room. She was surprised both of them were up. Maybe she’d slept longer than she thought - maybe she’d slept so long that she’d missed her appointment at that fort and neither of them had woken her because Mamae convinced Papae that she was right when they went to bed -

Her chest was even tighter by the time she went out to the living room. There was pressure behind her eyes. She felt absurdly like crying. Her mother and father were on the couch, her mother’s legs tucked up into her father’s lap, his hand resting affectionately on them, and the room was filled with the rich scent of coffee. No doubt her mother had a mug cradled in her lap. The sight bothered her, somehow. The two of them so content.

“On dhea,” she murmured as she passed them, not really looking their direction.

“On dhea,” her father called. There was nothing from her mother.

She felt their eyes on her as she went into the kitchen. She wondered which of them had put the blanket around her. Another sign that she was a child. She could see now from the clock on the wall that it wasn’t too late. Shewouldn’t have as much time as she’d planned on for warming up before she left for the fort now. She stared at the bowl of fruits on the counter - all fresh, many of them her favorite - and knew she should eat at least one before she left, but her stomach was still in knots, and her heart was still in her throat, which was so  _ stupid _ because she was barely even awake and nothing had happened and yet she was so  _ afraid _ -

Her parents’ voices continued, low, in the other room. Her mother chuckled at something. Ashara chose a pear and decided to eat it in the study, where she could review her notes from the night before. She headed back through the living room, not making eye contact with her parents, who seemed to be wrapped up in a conversation of their own.

“I should start my day. I need to stretch before I do anything else,” her mother said.

“I am not surprised, after last night. Shall I help you?”

Her father’s warm tone left little to the imagination. A stab of anger flared in Ashara at the - the - impropriety of it, at their closeness, their safety, their companionship -

“Couldn’t you have at least waited until I was out of the room before saying things like that?” She said the words before she’d processed them. She knew, distantly, that her tone was snappish - that she’d been walking quietly and had deliberately avoided drawing their attention to herself - but still the agitation didn’t die. Still her heart beat too fast in her chest, still she didn’t know why she thought suddenly of Lucius, why she realized only now that she didn’t remember her dreams from the night before, that she wanted to know if he’d reached for her as he had before -

Both of her parents were staring at her, something like concern in their eyes. She shook her head and continued on her way to the study. She sat there, pear untouched, and read and reread the notes from the night before. She tried in vain to calm the racing of her heart, the heat in her cheeks. None of the notes made sense. She couldn’t make any of them stick in her mind.

“Ashara?” It was Mamae. She did not turn. “I was going to make breakfast if you want more than that pear.”

Livia would never make breakfast for Sylvio again.

Ashara pushed the notes away and stood. “I don’t have time. I need to get dressed and warm up and head to the fort. I don’t want to be late.”

She locked eyes with her mother while she said it. Mamae lifted her chin. Hardened her eyes.

“I can send word that you’ll be running late. Or you can reschedule. You shouldn’t go on an empty stomach.”

“I’ll be fine. My connection to the Fade is restored. I’ll draw strength from there.” She started doing so even as she said the words, feeling the warm hum of her magic in her veins. It did not calm her the way it usually did, but it made her feel stronger, and that was all she needed, in any case. She would feel less nervous after her appointment.

“You should still eat something. You know your father would agree. He said your ability to draw sustenance from the Fade isn’t strong enough yet to forgo food completely.”

“I’ll eat later.” Ashara walked to the door, but her mother didn’t move. She frowned and looked up at her instead.

“Your hair is a mess.”

“Well, I can’t fix it here in the study, can I?”

Mamae’s frown deepened. She looked like she was about to say something -  _ I don’t appreciate that tone _ , most likely. Then she stepped aside, and Ashara left without another word.

Her hair  _ was _ a mess, after sleeping on the couch without it wrapped or braided for the night, and it did take time to smooth it and pull it back tightly enough that it wouldn’t be in her way while she worked. By the time that was done she needed to leave, and couldn’t even take the time to warm up with some of the exercises she’d learned as a young mage. She did not say good-bye to either of her parents on her way out. She used the Fade to speed her step as she went - and then stopped, realizing that she might drain her mana too quickly, and she really didn’t know what they would have her do in this test, and there was still that absurd pressure in her chest -

When she got to the fort, there were other elves present in the training yard where she’d been told to report, most of them appearing to be about her age. They were standing in a sort of haphazard line facing the door that led into the main building of the fort. The training yard was cast in long shadows by that building, which was good, considering that the fort lay at the top of one of the only hills in the city, and Ashara had begun to sweat on her brisk walk up. She stood on one end of the line, glancing at the other elf beside her. He was close to her height, with long curling brown hair in a braid down his back. When he glanced back at her, she saw his eyes were gray, like her mother’s, and that he had a deep scar on his cheek. He also had the angular features so specifically associated with Elvhen - the long face, the strong jaw, the high-set eyes. She noticed his hair was actually shaved close to the scalp on the sides - another common practice of those who hailed from Elvhenan.

“Good morning,” he said. “Are you also here to be evaluated for the path to victory?” His grasp of the Elvhen language was flawless, too, with some of the same conjugations common to its older form, though he had an accent she could not place.

“Yes,” she said. “I am Ashara.”

“Well met,” he said. “I am Haleir.”

An Elvhen name, too. She distracted herself from the twisting in her stomach by speculating on who he was. He was here to be evaluated for the army, and for a discipline that had been far more common in her father’s time, so he had to be close to her own age, right? He didn’t hold himself with that strange stillness and poise that other ancients did. He fidgeted just as much as the others in line. When Ashara glanced down that line, she saw at least a dozen other mages, none of whom she recognized from her days at school. She would have loved a friendly face. She would have loved to see, inexplicably, Claudia standing in that line. Or Lucius.

Their trainer, when she emerged, was an Elvhen woman with a hairstyle similar to Haleir’s, except that hers was shaved even closer to the scalp, and her white hair fell in a long, thin braid rather than a thick one. She had no vallaslin. Ashara recognized her at once. Her name was Eshne, and she’d once served Elgar’nan, and after that she had fought at her father’s side against the man who had been her master. She’d gone into uthenera after searching for Fen’Harel following the catastrophic raising of the Veil, and Papae had awakened her after he left the Inquisition. Ashara had not seen her in years, and had never known her well, but at least she was not a total stranger.

“Welcome,” she said in Trade. “You are all here to be evaluated for Dirth’ena Enasalin. If you don’t know what that is, you’ll probably want to go home and evaluate your life instead.”

That won her a few nervous chuckles. Ashara remembered a memory Papae showed her of Eshne’s witty tongue earning her a lashing from an electric whip, conjured in Elgar’nan’s hand. She wondered if she still had the scars. How she’d maintained that wit in the face of all that happened to her.

“As exciting as it is, we will have to start off with some paperwork today. I want to learn a little about you before I start putting spirit blades in your hands. Line up, and follow me.”

Ashara fell to the back of the line, but she was tall for an elf, and she could still see over many of the heads before her, which meant she caught Eshne’s eye before she entered the building. Eshne’s eyes widened in sudden recognition, and she caught her arm before she could enter.

“Mythal’enaste. You’re Fen’Harel’s daughter - Ashara, wasn’t it? Gods, but you look like your father now that I can see you up close. What are you doing here? I haven’t seen you since you were just a girl. You must have been twelve or thirteen. How many years has it been? I’m no good at keeping track.”

Ashara remembered this quality of Eshne’s too - her tendency to speak rapidly, darting from subject to subject. It endeared her to the other elf at once. Ashara’s own mind was the same way.

“I am twenty-two now.”

“Still so young. I can’t believe we take you into this business when you are so young. In Elvhenan, war was for elders and slaves - people who had lived long lives and had enough experience to survive, and people no one cared about. Not for only daughters with their whole life ahead of them.”

Ashara was less endeared to her now. Had Mamae written to Eshne ahead of time, demanding that she give the same lecture to her? But Eshne was already continuing.

“And anyway, why aren’t you speaking to Fennas about rift magic? I’m sure you’d be good at that.”

Her first impulse was that while, yes, she was Fen’Harel’s daughter, and she was good at rift magic, she did not have to do everything her father did, and that frankly learning from someone who called themselves “wolf-like” in her native tongue and taught her father’s discipline sounded like one of the worst things she could imagine, but Ashara stopped herself. Eshne was her elder, and someone whose approval she was here to win. This wasn’t about her own pride. This was about Livia and Vito and Gwynne and Tamaris and Velriel and every other elf who’d ever suffered the way they did. She was doing this for them.

“I am drawn to this discipline, tar’lan. I believe I can be good at this, too. And I want to serve my country and my people, no matter whose daughter I am.”

Eshne glanced behind her at the room beyond, where the others waited. She lowered her voice and spoke Elvhen.

“And after what you have been through, little one, and so recently? You want to risk seeing more suffering and death?”

Ashara immediately willed away the memories that raised. Vito’s insides spilling out. The odd angle of Gwynne’s neck. The outhouse smell of it all. No. She would think of none of it. Not right now.

“Yes. I am firm in my resolve.”

Eshne sighed. “Very well. But if your father comes after me, I’m not taking your side. I haven’t seen him angry in several millennia, not since most holy Mythal was murdered, and I am not looking for a repeat performance.”

Ashara bit back her anger again. She knew it showed on her face. Eshne’s eyebrows went up.

“I assure you, my father knows where I am. He supports my decision.” Thankfully, Eshne had not asked after Mamae. Ashara did not have to lie. At least not now.

“Then go in, little one. Wait your turn with the others.”

They attracted stares now, and many pairs of eyes followed Ashara as she found a new place in line, and Eshne led them further into the fort. No doubt they were wondering why she had been singled out to speak with the instructor so soon. Their fascination would only increase once she started introducing herself with her full name. Ashara’s throat and mouth felt sour. She was happy she hadn’t eaten much. She might have lost her breakfast, otherwise.

The forms were simple enough. They asked about her age, her birthplace, her family, her education, her experience as a mage, which schools she was drawn to and which spells she was considered to have mastered. Eshne had an assistant collect them all when they were done, and then she retreated to a small office and closed the door, leaving them in the room full of long tables where they’d filled out the forms. Ashara had chosen a seat at the far end of one of the tables, not looking for conversation. Distantly, she was aware that that was an odd choice for her, that usually she would have already introduced herself to half the people in the room. She didn’t dwell on it. There were a few more sidelong glances in her direction, but no one approached her. She closed her eyes and meditated, hoping to finally soothe away all the things that had plagued her since she woke.

When Eshne returned, her demeanor had changed noticeably. She stood straighter and taller. Her eyes were narrower. The unmistakable hilt of a spirit sword was visible over her shoulder.

“Two equal lines,” she said. “Either side of the room.”

With a scuffle, they all complied. Ashara was in the middle of one line this time. Her heart picked up. The two assistants who’d accompanied Eshne prowled up and down the lines, looking for something, though what she did not know. Instantly, she thought of the guards in Clermont. How they hadn’t been looking for anything other than pointed ears. How she’d stared at painted flowers on white buildings and failed to notice just how much danger they were all in.

“Go.”

Eshne’s barked command startled her out of her reverie, and she followed the others without question. They walked quickly and quietly through the halls of the fort and out the other side of it - into the wilds on the outskirts of the city. From there, they turned quickly from the path and headed into the trees. Though none of them spoke, and she knew no one she was with, Ashara felt an immediate sort of kinship with the people around her. They were together in their confusion, their loss as to what would come next. She could sense that. She liked that. It was what she was looking for in the army. A new home, a new shared sense of purpose, and atonement.

They stopped in a wide clearing that sloped up into a hill crowned with a tall oak. On the left side of the clearing was a towering pile of rough-hewn stones, at least five feet high. The assistants prowled up and down the lines like working dogs corralling cattle. Ashara felt her heart race every time they came near to her, even though they’d been perfectly benign figures at the fort. Something was different about them now.

Once they seemed satisfied with the two lines of mages, they looked to Eshne, who gave them a single, terse nod. They each withdrew vials from pouches at their belts.

“This is magebane,” Eshne said. “You will take it, and you will complete the next task I assign. If you do not wish to take the magebane, or if you fail the task, you will no longer be under consideration for Dirth’ena Enasalin. The choice is yours.”

Again, Ashara had that sense of a group emotion passing through her - shared nervous glances, a tingling in her spine and a prickling in her mana. Beneath that ran a sudden torrent of her own private fear. She knew the feeling Eshne and her assistants promised. The bitter film the poison would leave on her tongue, the nausea, the heaviness and panic of losing her connection to the Fade. If being an arcane warrior was magic writ large, magic channeled through every muscle in your body, why would they begin with a task that drained their magic? That took away her one strength? It would be just like with Falon’Din, when her parents force fed her magebane to weaken him - just like with the templar in Clermont - helpless hopeless gasping terrified she would die -

“Lavellan?” Eshne’s sharp tone brought Ashara back. She felt cold, but there was still a fine layer of sweat coating her body. She noticed that three recruits had stepped aside, leaving eight of them with vials in their hands. Eshne had read the panic on her face and wanted to see if there would be four who refused the magebane.

Ashara swallowed, squared her shoulders, and walked over to the eight recruits who had vials in their hands. She was afraid, yes. But that fear would not rule her. She had to become strong. Then she would never feel afraid again.

The vial the assistant handed her was cold in her hand.

The other assistant led the three who’d changed their minds away.

Eshne and the remaining assistant - a male elf - remained.

“Drink,” Eshne said.

They all exchanged another glance - Ashara had ended up beside Haleir once more, she noticed - and then they all uncorked their vials and downed them.

Ashara had been fully under Falon’Din’s control when her mother force fed her magebane two years before. She only really remembered the after - coming back to herself and retching violently from a combination of panic and disgust, sobbing in her mother’s arms when that was done. This time she poured it straight down her throat as much as she could, and though she gagged, though she bent double, she kept it down. Then came the wave of its effect - vertigo, dizziness, that all-consuming heaviness, as her mana left her. She couldn’t breathe. She needed to scream - shout - flee -

“Very well,” Eshne said, though none of them had recovered fully. One male recruit was still on hands and knees, gagging. “I want those stones in a pile at that base of that tree. You have until my hourglass is empty. Fail, and I dismiss all of you. Begin.”

It was a medium-sized hourglass. Maybe ten minutes’ worth of sand at most. Ashara pulled herself back to her full height. Sparks danced in her eyes. She would faint. Or vomit. No. She had to do this.

Recruits were already moving in the direction of the stones. The one on his hands and knees had not moved. Eshne and her assistant were still as statues, impassive. Ashara bent down beside him.

“Let’s go, lethallen. They need us.”

He looked up at her with bleary, terrified brown eyes. She forced a shaky smile, and held out her hand. He took it, and together they made their way to the pile of stones, where other recruits were already moving, arguing, and making their way up the hill. They were already sweating, all of them, and some were dropping their stones or pausing to vomit in the grass.

“We need to organize this,” Ashara said to no one in particular. “We need to work together.”

“What do you suggest?” It was Haleir. His pale skin looked grey with fatigue. Only one or two stones were already at the top of the hill. The pile seemed monstrous - impossible - she would fail at this just as she had failed to save the people who relied on her -

“A chain,” said a female recruit nearby. “That’s what my family does with bales of hay.”

There was arguing - organizing - but eventually they managed it. The weaker, more dazed recruits stayed close to the pile and passed the stones a shorter distance. The stronger, taller recruits arrayed themselves along the hill. Ashara found herself somewhere in the middle. They kept up a quick chatter in Elvhen and Trade.  _ Faster. Slower. Here. Careful! I’m going to be sick. _ They were halfway through when Ashara felt the lightness of her mana returning. She took deep breaths, started to draw on it, to bring a little strength to her screaming muscles -

The crack of the mana cleanse rendered her blind. She fell to her knees. This was not like the templar’s smite - oppressive, smothering - but like there was fire in her veins, burning away every trace of her magic. She dug her fingers into the earth and bit her tongue to hold back a scream. Eshne’s wrapped feet appeared.

“You’re strong. Your mana is returning quickly.”

Ashara’s heart hammered. She wanted this over. Everything hurt. She was letting everyone down. She thought suddenly, wildly, of the cuts on her hands from the rough-hewn stones, of the power in her own blood -

“I’ve got you.”

There were hands under her arms, lifting her. The brown-eyed recruit from before, the one she’d helped.

“Go to the end of the line with him,” he said. He meant Haleir, who was similarly dazed. Had Eshne cleansed his mana, too? Her blood still felt like it was on fire. This was worse than the magebane. You could hurt another mage if you drained them hard enough, or clashed your mana with theirs.

They were guided to the end of the line. Ashara’s world narrowed to her hands, and the stones. Lift. Pass. She didn’t know how much time was left, or how many stones. The task was endless. She was sure of it.

Then there was no more sand in the hourglass - and no more stones in front of her. She looked up the hill and saw their pile - not as tall, not as well formed, but there, in the spot Eshne had indicated.

“Not bad,” Eshne said. “Not good, either. Again. Bring them down.”   
The hourglass her assistant handed her was half the size of the first one. She flipped it immediately.

Ashara saw the same despair she felt mirrored in the faces around her.

“Go,” one recruit, a black-haired woman, said. “Go!”

“Push the stones down the hill,” called another.

“Someone stay behind to pile them again.”

“Be careful of the ones rolling down.”

Ashara found herself up the hill. She could do this. This was where she was meant to be. She helped the others push the stones. She went after the ones that became stuck. She helped the others to their feet as their mana returned and Eshne drained it from them. She was drenched in sweat, and scraped up to her elbows.

“Faster!” Eshne shouted. “It shouldn’t matter if your mana is gone or not. You wish to know the path to victory - then know that it starts here. In your blood and your sweat. What will you do someday when your mana is gone and you are lying there on the cold ground surrounded by enemy soldiers? You will fight them with your fingernails if you have to!”

Ashara’s hands shook. She’d already lain on the cold ground with her mana drained and her friends dying. She could still hear them. She dropped the stone.

“Hurry!” hissed the recruit at her side.

_ I’m trying _ . The words wouldn’t quite come out. They were a small sob instead. Then another.  _ Enough. Enough. I can’t do it. _ She picked up the stone and she threw it, hard, and with the motion gathered all the energy around her and flung the other stones, all of them, down the hill, towards the image she saw of the iron-haired captain who slit Tamaris’s throat, towards Falon’Din -

It didn’t occur to her until the silence that followed that she’d used magic. A reflexive force spell - not even her usual specialty. It was haphazard, to be sure - but it had cleared the stones from the hill and gotten most of them onto the pile, or at least near it. A shimmering barrier surrounded Eshne and her assistant where they stood nearby it. Ashara braced herself for another mana drain, but Eshne stood still, and silent. There was some scrambling behind Ashara but she was only dimly aware of it. She was transfixed by the sand running through the hourglass in Eshne’s hand. It ran out.

“Freeze,” the assistant shouted. The barrier disappeared. Ashara felt sick all over again, though her mana flickered stronger and stronger in her every moment. They weren’t supposed to use magic. Why else would they use the magebane and the mana cleansing? Why would Eshne say the things she said? She would be disqualified for certain. Another failure. Ashara looked down at last.

“Back into two lines,” Eshne said. “Quickly.”

They did their best, helping each other along as they went. Ashara kept her eyes down. Her stupid, stupid eyes that everyone, even strangers, could read. The assistant came by once more, with more vials - the opalescent red of healing potions, this time.

“Drink. It will restore you. If anyone’s mana fails to return, we have lyrium as well.”

Ashara drank. The cuts and bruises on her hands healed. Her muscles did not ache so much. But she still felt hollow, and tired, and heavy, and ashamed. They were silent on their return trip to the fort. Ashara began planning what she would do when they told her she had failed. Would they still let her serve in the army under a different specialization? Or would the fact that she broke a rule be severe enough to disqualify her? And if it was - what then? What would she do now? She’d already sent word to Vir’anor saying she would not return to her work with them. What would she do? Where would she go? Would she just have to live at home and waste her life?

“You will wait here,” Eshne said when they reached the fort once more. “My lieutenants and I will confer, and we will call you in one at a time to discuss the results of today’s exercise.”

Ashara sat at the end of one of the long tables again, hoping they’d call her first and send her home first. Wouldn't Mamae be pleased that she’d failed. Maybe she wouldn’t go home even after they let her go.

“So, you are the Ashara people keep talking about. The one who was in Clermont.” It was Haleir, taking a seat opposite from her. He was speaking Elvhen, as before. “I heard her call you Lavellan.”

Ashara sighed. “Yes. I am.”

“Your parents -”

“Yes. They are who you think they are.”

Haleir was unfazed by her curt tone.

“It shows. Your magic shakes the world.”

It was a poetic turn of phrase in Elvhen. An archaic one. There was nothing to do but wait now, so Ashara decided to press on.

“You speak the tongue of our people well,” she said, slipping into the older cadences as well.

“It was my tongue’s first speaking.”

She noted his sharp features and his hair again - but still she did not get the same sense of ancientness she got from other Elvhen.

“Are you one of the awakened ones?”

“No. I was born in this world. But both of my parents were born in the other world. Like your father. We are both broken ends.”

It was a term she’d heard for the children of Elvhen parents born in this world once or twice. It always made her back stiffen.

“I do not see it that way. I am not broken.” And yet, and yet, she still felt hollowed out - had felt hollowed out since that day in Clermont - wanted nothing so much as to put her head down and drift out of existence.

“You are not broken - but you cannot deny there is a - gap between us and our parents. The way my parents looked at me and my siblings sometimes - like we were creatures from another world. Like they didn’t quite know how to be parents. They never expected to be, after all.”

He stumbled in and out of old words, struggling to find the way to describe it.

“I think I know what you mean. I’ve seen that look in my father’s eyes. But maybe it’s strange for any new parent.”

“You’re too glib. There’s something different about what we are.” He glanced at the other recruits. “We were the first to get our mana back today. These are all gifted mages - they would not have passed the very first assessments otherwise - and we all got the same dose of the poison. And tell me - did you not suspect I was Elvhen, even before this conversation?”

Ashara knew herself to be a gregarious person, sometimes to the annoyance of others. Even she found herself put off by how forward he was. How he talked like they were already old friends.

“I did. But we’re not  _ that _ different from other elves. And we certainly aren’t better than them.” Who were his parents in Elvhenan? High-ranking nobles? Did they belong to a court that despised her father? Some of those Elvhen still existed. They had threatened violence when she was a baby. Her hands curled into fists against her knees. Was it not enough that she failed today - did she need this, too?

“I am sorry,” Haleir said. “I am very nervous. This - being accepted as someone worthy to study the path to victory - it has a great deal of meaning for me. I rarely meet other people like us. Children of both worlds - the old and the new. Well, other than my six siblings. I thought you might like to talk.”

Ashara loosened her hands. She forced herself to relax every muscle she had tensed.

“Six?”

He smiled. “Six.”

“Lavellan,” Eshne called, and it was time to go.

“Before you say anything -” Ashara said as she entered the small antechamber. Eshne raised one eyebrow, and that gesture alone was enough to silence her.

“Are you in the habit of speaking before your superiors do?”

Another failure. “I am sorry, tar’lan.”

“Sit.” Ashara complied, and Eshne leaned forward on the desk between them. “You did well today.”

Ashara didn’t think anything could have possibly shocked her more than those words.

“My lieutenant and I were pleased to see that you were among the first to help a fellow recruit, and that you were among the first to suggest that the task should be a group effort. I was also impressed with how quickly your mana returned after drinking the magebane. And the fact that you persisted through both the magebane and my mana cleanse despite your obvious pain was also admirable. The fact that you recovered so quickly from losing your mana a second time was yet another pleasing surprise. Was that last spell of yours intentional?”

Here it was then. Ashara sat forward.

“No, it was not. I didn’t mean to break the rules. It was instinctive. I am so -”

“Lavellan, when did I tell you that there were rules for this task?”

Ashara paused, and thought back on the day’s activities. She felt her face heat when she realized that Eshne was right. She had never said magic wasn’t allowed. She had simply punished them whenever they used it. Those were not the same thing.

“I assumed -” Ashara began. Eshne let out a short, barking laugh.

“Ah, and there’s one problem. Be careful with assumptions, da’len. I was impressed by the final spell. If I hadn’t been quick with my barrier, you might have killed my poor lieutenant and I with some of those stones. That’s a good showing of raw power under stress. We’ll want to hone that raw power - but if your back is against a wall in a real fight, it’s a trait you want to have. Though I suppose you must already know that, after what happened in Clermont.”

Eshne’s face softened. She spread her hands on the table.

“Which leads me to my one and only concern with you as a recruit interested in Dirth’ena Enasalin. With any recruit interested in serving in our army, to tell the truth. Your initial reaction to the thought of the magebane - and your reactions at several different points throughout the task - they were intensely emotional. And those emotions did cripple you several times. If you choose to join our program, you will continue to face high levels of stress, and you will continue to face whatever it was that crippled you today. That is to say nothing of your potential service in the army - and the fact that there is every chance that we will soon be in a real war, and not training at all. You will leave the army with ghosts even if you survive every battle, da’len. If you are already carrying ghosts in with you… there would be no shame in bowing out now.”

So it had been obvious after all. Ashara looked down at her lap. She pressed her nails hard into her palms. She thought of Livia and how hard she worked for how many years to reach a country she did not live to see. She thought of Gwynne’s brothers, younger even than she was, and how they planned on joining the army. She thought of the grandchildren Velriel would never meet, and of Tamaris’s empty, lonely house. Those were the ghosts that mattered. Her own personal pain - she could push it aside. She would push it aside. She would have to.

“I will be fine,” Ashara said at last, looking up. “If you will accept me as a recruit - then I will not let you down. I am ready for this. I want this.”

Eshne held her gaze for a moment longer than seemed normal, just long enough to make Ashara’s heart jump. Then she broke eye contact, and pushed a sheaf of parchment across the desk.

“Your orders, then. You will move into the barracks in two days’ time. Training begins on the morning of the third day. Bring only what is on this packing list, and nothing more. You will entertain no visitors, and you will not leave the fort except on training exercises, until the first phase of your training is complete in a month’s time.”

Ashara felt a rush of emotions too quick to name at first. It was only as she left the fort that she began to untangle them - excitement, relief, fear, longing. Dread.

*

Mamae and Sylvio were sitting on the couch in the living room looking at a book together when Ashara came home. Sylvio was nestled close to her mother, his head pillowed on her chest, his fingers tracing shapes on the page as she read to him. She was surprised to see him so close to a stranger, after how long it had taken him to warm up to other new people - but that was her mother’s talent, she supposed.

“Is that my old picture book?” she asked as she crossed to them.

“You’re back,” Mamae said, looking up with surprise. “I thought you were your father. I assumed your appointment might take all day.” Mamae looked her over. “Did you roll down a hill?”

Ashara took stock of her simple training robes for the first time. They were covered in dirt and grass stains.

“Not exactly.”

“Did you go to the park?” Sylvio asked. She smiled, and ruffled his black hair.

“No, I didn’t. I went and took a test with some other mages.”

“And?” There was weight in that one word as it fell from her mother’s lips. Ashara stood up straight, and held out the stack of parchment.

“I passed. I start my official training in three days.”

Mamae closed the book so her hand was free to take the parchment. Her brows drew close together as she read. She flipped through all of them, eventually, Sylvio peering curiously at them all the while.

“There are no pictures,” he said at last.

Mamae looked up when she was done.

“You are certain that this is what you want?”

“Yes. Of course. I have to do this.”

“You don’t  _ have _ to do anything. Many people join the army because they have no other choice - they need to put food on their tables - but you know that you want for nothing -”

“And other people join the army because they believe in what it stands for. I want to protect my people, Mamae. I want to stand for something. I want to stand against all those people in Orlais who would cheer if Enasan was wiped off the face of Thedas, and every one of our people with it.”

Mamae looked very tired, suddenly. She shook her head, and handed the papers back. “If this is what you truly want, I will not stand in your way. But I am worried for you, da’vhenan.”

Ashara didn’t know what to say to that. She looked away instead. “I am going to bathe and begin packing. I’ll go shopping tomorrow for the things I am missing on this list.”

“I can take you, if you like.”

“It’s fine. I have my own money. And I’m sure you have things to do.”

Ashara bent and gave her mother a brief embrace, and tousled Sylvio’s hair one more time, and then retreated to her room, where she only got as far as removing her dirty, sweaty clothes and then lying on her bed, looking up at the white ceiling, and drifting, thinking of the pile of stones, of the burning in her blood, of how her life would never be the same again when this training was done. She would be an arcane warrior. She would be safe, and so would everyone she loved.

She didn’t realize she’d fallen asleep until a knock at her door roused her. She threw on her favorite dressing gown before going to the door, and saw that it was her father when she opened it, telling her that dinner was ready.

“I hear the testing went well,” he said after a moment’s pause. “Eshne sent me a note. I did not realize she was in charge of training for this particular program now. She is excellent - one of Elgar’nan’s best. You will learn much from her. She had good things to say of you as well. I hope you are proud of your performance today.”

Ashara smiled, though she realized as Papae said the words that she hadn’t quite felt proud yet. She tried to feel it then, but something went awry inside her, and instead the same gnawing feeling she’d had all morning came back.

“I am,” she lied.

“Good. I can scarcely believe we will have only two more days with you before you must go. That is not enough time for your poor mother and I, after everything that has happened. But if this is what you truly want, it is worth it.”

There was a question buried in his words, a subtle intonation that anyone who did not know him well enough would not have heard.  _ Is this what you really want? _ It asked.

“It is what I want.”

“Then tonight is a night to celebrate. You should dress and join us - I have a surprise waiting for you.”

The surprise was her favorite chocolate and berry cake, and roasted duck and watercress salad and glazed roots, and Ashara found she could barely eat a single bite.

*

Ashara ran into Haleir outside of a bookshop in the center of the city the day before she was to report to the fort for training - before they both were, as it turned out.

“I am pleased to hear you were accepted as well,” she said when he shared the news, though she had scarcely thought of him since the day of their test.

“I am, too. I told my parents in dreams last night, and they were thrilled - as are yours, I am sure.”

“Then you are a Dreamer, too?”

“Yes. I have no incredible skill at it, but I have the gift. My mother has it too. She says it is why Sylaise valued her so highly, back in the days of Arlathan. You have it too?”

“Yes.” Ashara wondered what he meant by no incredible skill. Perhaps he could find the dreams of people he knew, but he could not search for unknown people, or find ancient memories, or alter much of what he found - all things that she and her father found quite natural.

“I suppose the isolation will be easier for us, then. We’ll still be able to visit people we know in the Fade. I’d imagine they can’t tell us not to do that.”

“True.” 

Why did she have so little to say to him? She’d always loved to meet new people, no matter who they were or where they were from. It was true that she rarely met other people close to her own age who had even one Elvhen parent, let alone two - and rarer still that she met another Dreamer. But she found that she only wanted to take her new, blank notebooks (the two regulations would allow her to bring for her training) and go home and have some silence, some solitude.

“I am meeting with some of the other recruits to celebrate our last night of freedom at the Rose and Crown tonight. Do you know it? The Fereldan tavern, half a mile east of the park?”

“I do. I - I may be able to stop by. I had planned on spending the evening with my parents.”

“Of course. We’ll all be seeing enough of each other soon, anyway. If I do not see you tonight, I will see you tomorrow morning at the fort. Don’t mind me if I look a little green then. I plan on drinking a month’s worth of cheap whiskey tonight.”

Ashara laughed, and bid him good day, and went on her way back home, still turning the interaction over and over again in her mind. Why did she keep getting this sense that her own emotions, her own reactions, were disconnected from her - beyond her control or her understanding? She should have wanted to spend time with the other recruits. She should have been more excited to talk to Haleir. She should have been pleased that one of her favorite merchants had a fresh batch of roasted hazelnuts to offer her, instead of feeling that each and every one had no taste in her mouth.

Her parents had another special dinner waiting for her that night. An Antivan dish with a spicy red sauce and handmade pasta that her father and mother had spent the better part of the day cursing over in the kitchen. Apparently, Thom and Josephine had taught them the recipe the last time they visited. Sylvio had several questions about what  _ fenedhis _ and why her mamae swore by so many different parts of the Dread Wolf’s body, and who the Dread Wolf was, and why her papae made the most exasperated sounds every time her mamae said those things, when Ashara arrived home.

“I’m going to miss you,” she said, after declining to explain her parents’ cursing to him. “But you will be good for my mamae and papae while I am away, right?”

He nodded. “You’re not going away forever, right? Like the others?”

Ashara squeezed his shoulders. “No. Not forever. And I hear your aunt and uncle are coming to Enasan, right? Soon you will have your whole family here, and everything will be well.”

Sylvio nodded, though he did not look like he believed her.

The pasta was good. Better than anything she’d eaten in days. In the rosy glow of the wine they served alongside the dish, Ashara felt almost herself again. There was laughter, and ease, and comfort at the table that night. Her parents did not broach the subject of her training or the army much. Her mother found more excuses than usual to pat her hand or her shoulder and to call her  _ da’vhenan _ or  _ da’asha _ . All of that felt right and good. She thought of the Rose and Crown and the recruits gathered there only once, and with no regret. This was where she wanted to be. In the home she knew and loved. And in any case, she didn’t want to be too drunk. Just tipsy enough that she could slip easily into the Fade, and reach out to the other two people she missed most.

She found Claudia dreaming of the debate floor in the Magisterium, except every magister had been turned into an angry, screaming nug, and there was no roof, and the sky above was green and black.

“Oh, thank the Maker,” Claudia said when Ashara banished the spirits who’d taken those forms. She hugged her close, to Ashara’s surprise.

“What, because the nugs are gone?”

“No. Because you’re here.” Claudia drew back and appraised her. “I knew you were safe, but it’s still good to see you myself. Why haven’t you called Dorian with your mother’s crystal? He was worried sick, you know. He and Bull both. They put on a brave face, but I could tell. You should speak to them, in waking or here in the Fade.”

“I’ll try to, soon. The truth is I have barely seen my mother, even though she’s back in Enasan now.”

“And why is that?”

“I’m joining Enasan’s army. I have been very busy with that.”

Claudia did not hide her shock. She even took a step back. “Are you serious?”

“Of course I am.”

“Ash - I can’t believe it. You, a soldier.”

Ashara stiffened. How many more times would she be forced to have this conversation? “What do you mean?”

“It’s just that you are one of the kindest, gentlest people I know. And you’re so headstrong. When was the last time you actually listened to something someone told you to do?”

“Two days ago, when I did every single thing my superiors required of me in a fairly grueling test.” There was no need to mention her flare of magic at the end, and the fact that while it was not explicitly forbidden, she thought it was at the time. There was no need to mention that nearly everyone she had shared this news with expressed the same shock and concern.

Claudia raised her hands in surrender. “Fine, fine. I’m surprised. That’s all. I just - I can’t picture you dedicating your life to so much death. Especially after what you just went through. Are you sure you’re okay? It’s barely been a month since the attack in Clermont. Don’t you need more time to heal before you make such a big decision?”

Healing. Ashara hadn’t even thought about healing. She wasn’t even sure it was possible. Some part of her would always be hooked around that day, like a thread tied to a needle.

“My country may not have that kind of time.”

Claudia looked away. “Ah. Yes. There has been discussion of that, even here in Minrathous. I hope there is no war. I hope you have all the time you need to heal, instead.”

That word again. Perhaps it was because Claudia was a healer, and a gifted one at that. It must have colored the way she saw the world.

“I thought we might go and join Lucius in his dream, as well,” Ashara said. “I can make a version of Minrathous for us and we can go for a stroll, like we used to. It would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

Claudia gave her a long, searching look. “Yes. That would. He told me you saw him in the Fade, not long after you made it home. How was that?”

“Fine,” Ashara said, though she thought at once of seeing him that day, how much she wanted to fold herself into his arms and feel his hands in her hair and his lips on her forehead.

Claudia sighed. “Well, let’s go get him then. It’ll be nice to have the three of us together again, even if it’s only in a dream.”

Lucius was in a vague, incoherent dream, one that was either just ending or just beginning - or perhaps he had just fallen asleep, and the spirits of the Fade had not had a chance to coalesce around him. Ashara wove the loose strands into one of their favorite streets in Minrathous, instead, a tree-lined one with shops and food where they’d whiled away many an hour, the three of them. He blinked as he acclimated, and smiled when he saw them, and the Fade grew warmer with Ashara’s joy.

“This is an unexpected surprise.”

“Yes,” Claudia said. “Apparently Ash wanted to say good-bye to us before joining the army.”

Lucius turned to her at once in disbelief. “What?”

“It isn’t really good-bye,” she insisted. “I’m not allowed to leave the fort for a month, but they can’t control where I go when I dream. I can come see you every night, if I want.”

“But - the army? With everything that just happened?”

“I’m not sure why everyone is so fixated on everything that just happened.” Ashara’s tone was hot now, and the Fade was too. It felt like Minrathous in high summer. “That’s  _ why _ I have to join. I am one of only two elves who survived that attack. I have to do something to make that worthwhile. Something to protect my people. Something to feel safe.”

That last part slipped out - maybe because she was looking at Lucius as she said it, and remembering the safety of his whispered voice in her ear.  _ I have you. You’re safe. You’ll be fine, whatever happens _ .

“It’s a surprise. That’s all,” he said, gently. “You never showed any interest in the army before.”

“Well - I’ve changed, I guess.”

The Fade was still hot with her anger. She closed her eyes briefly and willed a breeze to blow through, ruffling their robes and their hair and cooling them off. There was no need for anger. They were surprised. That was all. They would understand with time. They were her friends. She was fine. Everything was fine.

“I’m sorry - this isn’t how I wanted this to go,” she said when she opened her eyes again. “I wanted things to be like old times. I don’t want anyone to be angry.”

“Neither of us is angry,” Claudia said. “Come, let’s walk.”

They walked the way they always had - Lucius on one side, Ashara in the middle, and Claudia on the other - not caring when they brushed shoulders to pass through a narrow lane. Claudia rested her hand on Ashara’s elbow when guiding her around a hole in the street and there was such an easy friendship in that gesture that it untwisted some of that pulsing, living fear inside her. Ashara could just hear the distant whispers of demons who promised to take that fear away forever. It was easy to ignore them here, in this world she remembered, next to two people she cherished.

There were no easy touches between her and Lucius. Even in dreams they kept a careful distance. He was quiet, though that was no surprise. Claudia asked how Rhea was - apparently they had finally met - and Lucius said that she was well, that her recent trip home to Qarinus yielded new investors for her plan to create carriages propelled by Force magic. She wanted to go to Weisshaupt next, to follow up on a rumor that the Grey Warden Garahel had once done something similar during the Fourth Blight. It struck Ashara again that when he spoke of her, he spoke of her accomplishments - not of the way she made him feel. But maybe that was normal. Maybe he was trying to protect her feelings.

They reached a statuary garden where they used to buy iced cream and sit to watch the people go by, and Claudia wandered off to marvel at the detail Ashara’s mind put into each statue. Ashara was pleased with herself. She remembered this place well. She liked that she could recreate it in her mind, and surprise her friend. She was good at some things. She was. She was not a failure.

“Ash, can I tell you something?”

Lucius’s voice startled her out of her reverie. He was leaning against a statue of some old archon whose name she couldn’t be bothered to recall.

“Of course.”

“What you said earlier. About joining the army to feel safe. It reminded me of something.” He straightened up and took a step towards her. He was tall - one of the few people she knew who looked down when he looked at her, even if only by a little. “I felt that way for a long time, you know. After I watched my brother die. After I killed the elf who murdered him. All those years in the Circle at Vyrantium, and then at Minrathous, I just wanted to get to a place in my life where I could feel safe again. I thought I would get there by doing whatever it took to secure a patron - any patron - and doing whatever he or she asked me to, and then by becoming a member of Altus society however they wanted me to, and by getting enough money that I could finally live among people who never really seemed to suffer. Not the way my brother did. Not the way I did.”

Ashara thought of the young man she’d met in the Circle library two years before - how suspicious he was, how afraid, how convinced there was no good in the world, how hard he locked her and Claudia out, at first. How he had nearly sold the secrets she shared with him in order to secure his place in the world. How he had refused to sell those secrets, in the end, with no guarantee that he could ever restore his place in Tevene society, because he’d realized what he truly wanted.

“But it didn’t work,” she said softly.

“No. The more I did that - the further it took me from myself. I’m not that kind of person. I always knew that, deep inside. I just tried to ignore it. It didn’t actually make me safer, in the end.” He raised one hand as though to run it through his hair, then dropped it. He’d imagine himself with his hair tied back behind his head, in this dream. Ashara wondered if that was how he wore it now, in waking. “If becoming a soldier is truly what you want, then I will of course be happy for you. Worried, but happy. But - I don’t want you to be surprised if it doesn’t actually make you feel safe.”

Ashara glanced towards Claudia. She was still on the other side of the garden, examining a statue of Maferath. Ashara mentally adjusted his weeping face to better match her memory. It felt hard to look at Lucius, suddenly. To remember.

“How did you realize it, in the end? That the way you were living your life wasn’t actually going to fix the things you feared to face?” She said finally. He did not answer at first. When she looked to him once more, she realized he had never looked away from her.

“You came into my life,” he said simply. “And I couldn’t deny who I was or what I really wanted anymore.”

It was quiet in the garden. Ashara could hear the rustle of Claudia’s fine leather boots on the grass. Lucius was so very close. She shifted her attention away from the statues, the buildings beyond, the cool breeze, and focused only on him for a moment. On how good it felt just to stand near him. On the realization that she had been a force for good in his life. She was good. No matter how she’d failed her friends in Clermont, she was still good.

She woke the next morning and went to the fort, and her chest was still tight with fear.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, Ashara. You hurt my brain and my heart to write but I love you.
> 
> Thank you as always for reading! Prompts, suggestions, comments and general discussion more than welcome here or on my [Tumblr](https://buttsonthebeach.tumblr.com/)!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A) This chapter is long
> 
> B) Ashara is not in a very healthy mental space throughout it. Just a head's up!

Ellana took Ashara to the fort the morning her training was to begin, and then she had to go back to the council’s chambers to answer a summons she’d received that morning. It was a difficult transition to make.

“I’ll be fine, Mamae,” Ashara said through thin lips for the third time that morning when she hugged her again.

Ellana did not say what she wanted to say. That she had barely seen her daughter smile since she came home. That she had barely _seen_ her daughter, period. That this was a mistake.

“I know that,” Ellana said. “You’ll forgive me for being a little sentimental, just like I forgave you for stretching out my stomach forever.”

That did win her a snort of amusement. Ashara initiated the embrace this time, and leaned into it, squeezing Ellana tight around the shoulders.

“Ar lath, Mamae.”

“Ar lath, da’asha.”

It really was silly to be calling a girl who was a head taller than you, and no longer really a girl, “little woman.” Just like it was silly to feel her eyes burning when she watched Solas embrace their daughter, or when she watched him walk away, Sylvio’s hand tight in his own, and remembered all the times Ashara was that small. She waited until all the recruits had gone inside, and then she forced herself to direct her steps to the council chambers. Her daughter was fine. She wasn’t even leaving the city, and she would come and visit them in their dreams.

Everyone was assembled by the time she arrived. Including, she noted with a cold bolt of fear, Ambassador Tabris.

“Ilriane,” she said, surprised. “If you’re here - you must have left not long after I did.”

“I did,” Ilriane said. “I left when Divine Victoria supported Etienne Villiers as the next emperor of Orlais, and he declared war on Enasan.”

The room was silent, but Ellana would have sworn she could hear the roar of the ocean in her ears.

Ellana remembered the first time she saw Corypheus. She remembered those last minutes as Haven fell. But she didn’t remember them as if they happened to her. She remembered them from a distance, remembered thinking even at the time _this isn’t real, this can’t be real, any moment I’m going to wake up and all of this will just be a nightmare_ . She knew already that this was how she would remember this moment. _The largest empire in Thedas just declared war on the country I have worked for more than twenty years to preserve. One of my dearest friends caused that to happen. I caused that to happen. This isn’t real._

“Is there no chance to reason with him?” Ellana asked.

“Of course there is. He has said that we could return the land we ‘stole’ and become citizens of the Orlesian Empire, and then there will be no war.” Ilriane’s tone was colder than Ellana had ever heard it before.

“Surely Divine Victoria doesn’t support this.”

“I don’t know. Grand Enchanter Vivienne suggested that I leave for my own safety shortly after the announcement was made.”

“There has been violence against elves in several places around Orlais,” Caralina said. “Rumors are spreading that we are the ones behind Celene’s death. Half the country still believes that what happened in Clermont is our fault. The one bright side is that another half of the country seems to think you interfered in the selection of their new ruler, and are refusing to support Villiers. De Pelletier is leading them of course. Orlais may be headed for another civil war.”

“And we may be headed for another Exalted March,” Arlanal said.

They had all migrated to the ornate wooden chairs that ringed the large oak table, and sunk down. No one had called them to order. Most of them wore identical, stony looks. Ellana could only imagine what her own expression was. She was still floating somewhere near the ceiling, unable to feel her face.

“Cassandra would never do that.”

“No? You were so certain that she would help when she came to your side at Halamshiral. And look where we are now. Think of what she already suspects about our country.”

As if she could forget.

“This is the one thing I feared with the creation of Enasan,” Arlanal went on, looking every inch the tired, fearful Keeper she was. “So many elves are in one place now. If we lose this war - our numbers will be fewer than ever before. This could mean the end for our people.”

Ellana did not wear the marks of June on her face anymore but she felt those words deep in every part of her that was Dalish. _We are the last of the Elvhen. Never again shall we submit._ That would have to be their battle cry, or Arlanal would be right.

“It won’t. I refuse to let that happen.” Ellana turned to Caralina, seated across the table from her with her fingers steepled. “Have your agents stoke the fires of civil war however they can. Villiers can’t fight us if he’s too busy fighting de Pelletier. If we make de Pelletier look like the biggest villain in this game - and then help defeat him - perhaps we can sway public opinion in our favor. We could prevent this war.”

Caralina arched one black eyebrow. “I was unaware that my agents took orders from you, Mistress Lavellan.”

Anger poured hot into Ellana’s chest - and beneath that, shame. Caralina was correct. She had no right to give any commands here. Everyone else’s eyes were on her.

“My apologies,” she said. The only emotion that came out in her tone was the anger.

“It is a sound strategy,” Abelas said. “And even if it fails, it can buy us time to prepare our forces, and to reach out to our allies for aid. Ferelden should be first, I think. They have no love for Orlais, and we have always been on good terms with King Alistair and Queen Anora. And Tevinter may see this as an opportunity, as well.”

“It will also give us time to choose a wartime leader,” Mateo said pointedly, looking to her. This was another moment that Ellana was already sure would live in her memory but not in her body, not really. Something that would feel like a dream, years down the road. She’d tried to command Caralina’s agents and yet her chest felt like it would cave in under the weight of everyone looking at her.

“There are few elves alive with your experience commanding soldiers and leading an organization,” Abelas said finally. “And those that have it are Elvhen like me - or like your bondmate. If Solas was to lead our efforts, the war would quickly be painted as an extension of the one twenty years ago. The other nations would fear that he sought to sunder the Veil once again. They may feel much the same about any other Elvhen at the head of a sizable army. But Ellana Lavellan - a child of this world and this time, and the woman who saved Thedas…?”

Ellana thought at once of the look in Cassandra and Vivienne’s eyes that day in Halamshiral. She curled her fingers into her palm and pressed her too-long nails into the skin.

“I think I may have used up all the good will my name carries.”

“I’d still be willing to bet it carries more than any of ours,” Arlanal said.

Ellana sank back into her chair, and did what she always did when she had to make a big decision as Inquisitor. She did not think in words or even really in images. She let her feelings wash over her. She let the fear go and dug beneath it to the pride of seeing Solas walking with their daughter down the streets of the city. She dug beneath that and felt the joy of seeing Dalish clans find a home at last. She dug beneath that and felt herself standing in the Winter Palace before the warped portrait of herself in the snow, wondering what her legacy would be. She had sown the seeds of this. It was time to see what fruit they bore.

“If it comes to war, I will lead us,” she said at last. “If that is the wish of the majority of the council. I will stand aside to any other suitable candidate you may find between now and then.”

The room was silent as the counselors looked to one another. Then they all gave their assent to the plan.

“I agree that we should do what we can to stoke the fires of civil war,” Caralina said at last. “I believe I can plant evidence suggesting that de Pelletier has given his forces orders to march on Villiers’ ancestral home to draw him away from Halamshiral. I may also give away the locations of some of Villiers’ troops to de Pelletier if I can manage it, so they can ambush and kill them. I will do my best to keep them at each other’s throats while we work out a way to end this war before it starts.”

“I would suggest that we also see to several precautionary matters within our forces,” Abelas said. “I would like to requisition more armor, supplies, weapons. Not enough to alarm any potential spies, but enough to make us more ready. And, of course, we might want to subtly increase the number of new soldiers we are training.”

Ellana saw Ashara’s face, determined and sad, as she went into the fort, and something punctured her lungs. It was hard to breathe.

“Do as you see fit. Keep all of us updated.”

There were other matters to see to - Mateo had thoughts on which resources might become scarce if Orlais cut off their trade, which was likely, and of rerouting caravans through Ferelden instead, and of the potential for raising taxes to cover the costs of the war. And that of course meant that Ilriane needed to share her thoughts on how to approach the monarchs of Ferelden about all of this, how to approach the cities of the Free Marches, Nevarra, Antiva, Tevinter…

Ilriane was in fact the one who lingered the longest. She always did, even when she was young and only an aide in Ellana’s service. She always had one more question, one more brief to share. Ellana’s heart ached for how tired she looked.

“I am sorry that we could not fix this, da’len,” Ellana said. “You did everything you could.”

Ilriane looked at her with something like the same betrayal Cassandra and Vivienne had in their eyes. Of course. Ellana had not made anything easy for her while she was in Orlais. But she had done what was necessary. Ilriane would see that with time.

“I am sure we will see each other soon, Mistress Lavellan,” Ilriane said before giving a short bow and leaving.

Ellana was alone in the council chamber, and there wasn’t enough air in it for her lungs. She had to get outside. She had to see and hear and feel trees and earth and sky. She needed to dig her toes into dirt.

She went home first, and found Solas and Sylvio just finishing lunch. She declined Solas’s offer to make her a plate.

“Let’s get out of the city,” she said. “Let’s go to the woods.”

He did not question why she wanted to go, and Ellana said a silent prayer of thanks for more than twenty years together, for their ability to communicate without words. He held her hand in the carriage they took to the outskirts of the city, and rubbed the back of it with his thumb.

The city was surrounded on every side by thick, tall trees, so ancient that they humbled Ellana every time she saw them, just as they had when she was in the Arbor Wilds for the first time. She never thought of it as that anymore. The Arbor Wilds - the place where she’d led an army against seemingly impossible odds - did not exist anymore. There was only Enasan.

And yet she might lead an army here again.

She closed her eyes and curled her toes into the earth, and listened to the forest the way she’d been taught as a young hunter in the Free Marches. She heard the breeze, the rustling of low-lying bushes, Sylvio crunching through both, Solas calling out a warning to him. A root that had breached the soil, something that might trip him. She breathed in loamy earth and dead leaves. She wished suddenly that she had not brought either of them with her. She didn’t want to hear them. She didn’t want to hear anything but the quiet, uncomplicated, sensible natural world. She wanted to be fifteen again and with her parents and her clan. That wasn’t true. It was a fleeting thought. She needed to let it go.

She rolled her shoulders back, rubbed at her forever sore right shoulder as best as she could. She felt her breath in her lungs and her blood in her veins and the flex of her muscles. She was in her body again.

When she opened her eyes Solas and Sylvio were some distance away, crouched low, investigating something. Ellana took another slow, deep breath. There was no sense in panic, in giving in to the restless sea of anxiety in her stomach. Prey panicked. Hunters did not. She could still lean on that lesson forty years later.

She joined Solas and Sylvio. They’d found an empty nest at the base of a tree, a scraggly collection of twigs and leaves and fluffy little feathers.

“So they didn’t need it anymore?” Sylvio said.

“No, they did not. Their children grew and they moved on, as they had to.”

Ellana hoped that’s what it was. She did not look to see if there was a trace of blood anywhere on the nest, or stop to try and determine what kind of bird it belonged to and what season it was, whether or not it was likely their young had been old enough to leave.

“I’m going to keep walking,” she said.

“Shall we join her?” Solas asked Sylvio. His voice was no different than the way he talked to an adult. Ellana loved that about him. He’d always taken Ashara so seriously, from the very first moment she opened her eyes, speaking to her like her thoughts and feelings mattered even when she was a tiny, scrunch-faced little thing. He treated children like they were people, and like they were worthy of respect.

Sylvio nodded, and extended his hand for Solas’s, and then the other for Ellana’s. For a moment she nearly wished that his aunt and uncle and cousins wouldn’t make the journey from Tevinter after all. They could take Sylvio in, finally have the second child they never conceived themselves - but it was a foolish thought. They could not raise another child with everything that was to come.

“The news out of Orlais is not good,” Solas said in Elvhen. It was not a question.

“No,” she replied, in the same tongue. “Cassandra chose Etienne Villiers. The young man assisting Briala and I. He seemed friendly enough. But his first act as emperor of Orlais was to declare war on Enasan.”

Solas nodded slowly. She could see his jaw tighten.

“And they are asking me to lead.”

She could handle those words out here, surrounded by trees that had seen a thousand wars and would live to see a thousand more. But only just. She remembered that march to the Arbor Wilds and already her mouth was dry.

“I don’t know if I can do this again,” she said.

Sylvio had dropped both of their hands and trotted a short distance away towards a particularly large and gnarled tree. His small hand was immediately replaced by Solas’s large, long-fingered one.

“You’ll do the best you can.”

Ellana closed her eyes.

“I hope it’s enough.”

Solas put his arm around her shoulders, pulled her against his body, and kissed her forehead.

“It will be.”

*

Two weeks went by, and then three, and Ellana started going to the council chambers every day for briefings, but she did not answer to anything other than Mistress Lavellan, and she did not meet with anyone outside of the council. Caralina was experiencing some success with her efforts to rile the Orlesian populace and nobility alternately against Villiers and de Pelletier. In an impressive coup, two agents in her employ posing as servants to two members of the Council of Heralds uncovered enough dangerous information to blackmail them into rescinding their support for Villiers. Ilriane was still waiting on word from her delegation to Ferelden.

While the newly minted Emperor Etienne had not been able to make good on his promise of war yet, Abelas still went through with his plans to increase the numbers of their troops and requisition necessary supplies. Every time she met with him she thought of Ashara, still in the city and yet a world away. She had not come to either of them in dreams since she began her training for Dirth’ena Enasalin.

“It is likely that Eshne commanded her not to use her abilities to reach out to us,” Solas said when the first week passed. “It is what I would do. A young soldier needs to focus only on their mission, on their comrades, on their training. All else is a distraction.”

“You’re right,” Ellana said, remembering young faces in Skyhold’s courtyard and in the tavern and in the ranks of men and women who died assaulting Adamant, gaining them entrance to the Temple of Mythal. They had not heard their parents’ voices in months either. Why should Ashara be any different? Why should she, as a mother? She really was being ridiculous. They would see her soon enough.

Unless Etienne Villiers solidified his control on the imperial army and the chevaliers and turned his gaze south.

“What is it with you and Orlesian civil wars?” Dorian said when they spoke. His tone was light but the way it was whenever he lied. “Was one not enough?”

“Clearly not.”

There was silence from the crystal, and then a sigh. “I suppose we’re at one of those points in our friendship where talking gets awkward.”

“Did it ever stop?”

“Ha ha.”

Leliana, of course, was the one who told her how the Chantry felt about all of this. Yes, Cassandra had supported Etienne Villiers, because he did not seem to be the vicious warmonger that de Pelletier did. Yes, she had formally denounced de Pelletier. But she had stopped short of declaring him guilty of what happened in Clermont, insisted that more investigation was needed, and there was still enough angry energy for him to capitalize on.

 _You know Cassandra_ , the letter said. _Balance in all things. Just as she did not push the Chantry to change too quickly, she will not push this quickly. But I have faith that she is on your side. She has condemned Villiers’ declaration of war and it would not surprise me if she called an Exalted Council to mediate, once the threat of civil war calms._

Cassandra herself had not written. Neither had Vivienne. Ellana did not bother trying to write to them. She kept up her usual correspondence with the others of her inner circle, watching as the letters trickled in and shifted from the usual updates and reminiscences to worry and caution.

When it had been nearly a month since Ellana returned from Orlais, Sylvio’s aunt and uncle and cousins arrived. They were timid and awed at first to be received into the home of the Dread Wolf and the Inquisitor, but Sylvio’s ease with them won them over, and as the house filled with the chatter of children they all relaxed. It struck Ellana, seeing them playing on the rug in the living room, that if Ashara and Lucius had remained together, if they had ever had children, they might have looked something like the brown-skinned black-haired Tevene elves before her. Maybe, in another life, none of this ever happened, and these were her grandchildren at play in her house.

Sylvio clung nervously to them when they escorted his family to their new house - a modest building in a good neighborhood, fairly close to the city center, paid for quietly out of their own considerable gold, and already partially furnished.

“You won’t go away forever, right?” he asked. His hand was clammy in Ellana’s own. She knelt down and kissed his forehead.

“I hope not. I will try my best not to, da’len. We will see each other again.”

He twisted his whole body back and forth, looking down at his feet.

“Not like Mama and Papa.”

“No. Not like your mama and papa.”

Ellana supposed everyone’s mind worked like that. Circling inevitably back to wounds and scars and bad dreams, no matter how bright the day was.

It was just her and Solas in the house once more. Waking to stillness and silence and the simplicity of tattered sweaters and old socks - toast for breakfast and whatever they managed to scrape together for lunch. Reading and replying to letters with barely a word passing between them, their usual absent touches saying all that needed to be said: a kiss on her cheek before she left the house wishing her luck, an affectionate squeeze of her rear when he wanted her to laugh. A hand drifting across the small of her back when she stood in their kitchen, coffee in hand, looking out the window and waiting for news of the war in Orlais, and for Ashara to come home.

*

Ashara didn’t remember the last time she thought of anything but how much her body hurt, and how much she wanted to sleep.

“Up,” Lieutenant Tarathiel barked. “Training gear. No armor or weapons. Shoes for running.”

A scattering of curses filled the air as they heaved their tired bodies out of their bunks and dropped to the floor of the austere wooden barracks. Ashara winced at the strain in her muscles, then a cool aura radiated from the mage in the bunk below her, and the strain dulled.

“Ma serannas, Marya,” she said, along with a chorus of other trainees.

Marya was a spirit healer, and an expert in Creation magic, and she wasn’t supposed to send out waves of healing energy like that (they were forbidden from using magic of any kind unless ordered to), but it was worth the risk after their forced march into the foothills on the northeastern side of the city, their three hours of tactical maneuvers and mock battles with their wooden blades, and their forced march back to the fort. They couldn’t have been asleep for more than five hours. When was the last time they slept more than five hours? Even if Eshne hadn’t commanded her and Haleir not to wander the Fade in search of friends and family, Ashara probably wouldn’t have had the energy to do it.

“Gods, I hope it’s not sprints today,” Ravaris groaned as they dressed.

“I hope it’s not weights,” Catriona called back.

There were one hundred and sixty of them in the barracks - four main groups on the four different levels of the building, further divided into groups of ten. They were a mixture of mages, warriors, and archers of all ages and genders. They slept, ate, and worked together every hour of every day for the first two weeks of their training. Almost none of it involved magic. It was all strengthening, drilling, and basic lessons in combat tactics and military history - both of Elvhenan, of the Dales, and of the various human kingdoms and empires. Ashara knew much of that history from her school days, but not with the detail and precision she did now. The number of battalions, the feint and maneuvers, the impact of having the high ground (and how a few powerful mages might erase that advantage).

It was only now that they were beginning to separate out into smaller, specialized units, and even then only in the afternoon. And even then, Ashara’s squad of ten mages destined to be arcane warriors were still stuck drilling with wooden swords half of the time.

“Fuck. Lieutenant Tarathiel is holding those big ropes again.”

They suppressed their collective groans. No good exercises came from the giant ropes. But Ashara took one consolation in it - the physical pain, the exhaustion, the lack of contact outside of her fellow recruits, left her no time for any other thought or feeling. She hadn’t felt like herself in weeks, and she liked that.

After an hour of painful exercise, they returned to their barracks and found Eshne and her lieutenants waiting for them.

“I hope you have all had fun playing around with the other children,” Eshne said. “Because after today, you won’t be playing around anymore. Go and change into your armor.”

They wore the armor occasionally for long marches, to acclimate them to the weight (although it was more a gesture of solidarity for their more heavily armored companions who were training to be warriors), but Eshne’s tone told Ashara that this wasn’t going to be a simple march. They would actually need the armor. The armor they’d been issued was simple, sturdy stuff - mostly ram’s leather, with some chainmail over the chest - and heavier than what the other mages wore. Eventually, Eshne had told them, if they managed to stop being such utter disgraces and actually completed their training, they would wear even heavier armor. They would go onto the front lines of battle and fight for their people in a whirl of magic and blade.

“Why do we need armor, I wonder?” Tayana asked. “I thought we would be crafting spirit blades soon.”

Ashara thought a moment, back to the study at home - at her parents’ house, she corrected herself. Home was wherever the army sent her now.

“Well, the spirit part of the spirit blade has to come from somewhere,” she said. “I believe we’ll need to get spirit essences for ours.”

“Fen’Harel’s teeth - do you mean we’ll need to fight spirits?” Wyrran asked, his blue eyes wide.

Ashara wondered sometimes how Wyrran managed to be here.

“Of a sort. Wisps, if I had to guess. I wonder if they already have a place in mind where they gather.”

It turned out that said place was a good distance out of the city - far enough that Eshne directed them to pack (and unpack - and repack - and unpack - and repack) for several nights out in the wilderness. Ashara wondered what that would be like - the ten of them, plus Eshne and her two lieutenants, out there alone, without the other recruits they’d become accustomed to. There was a strange intimacy to sharing so much with her fellow recruits - bathing spaces, meals, sleeping spaces, blood, mud, sweat, and tears - but there was so much they didn’t actually share. They rarely had time for a long conversation with each other. Yet as they filed out of the fort and into the woods that surrounded the city, Ashara felt her world narrowing to only the people around her, and she wondered if this trip would forge a new bond with them, if they would become like all the stories her mother and father shared about the Inquisition’s inner circle.

Ashara already knew two of the others - Catriona, a female elf about her own age of Fereldan descent, and Elen, a male elf a little younger than them whose parents were Dalish - from their scattered conversations on long night watches. She wondered if she would get to know them even better, or if she would get to know the others instead. The wonderful thing was that none of that was up to her to decide. She didn’t have to decide anything anymore. She just had to go where they told her to and do what they told her to, and if that was never how she lived her life before, or how she had ever imagined living her life… well, her purpose in life was no longer to ask questions. Not even of herself.

Their first night, camped in a glen hemmed in by maple trees, she was on watch with Haleir for the first time. She hadn’t seen much of him in the last weeks. He bunked in a different part of their building, and was on a different watch team, and they had not been partners for any of their exercises lately. But once they were alone, standing guard at the edge of the firelight, he slouched against a nearby tree and spoke as if picking up a conversation they’d left off minutes ago.

“So, I miss whiskey the most. I think I’d murder all three of my sisters for some right now. What do you miss the most?”

Ashara blinked slowly in confusion at the question, asked in Elvhen, like all their previous conversations. She was trying not to miss anything. Not to think about anything.

“I don’t know.”

“Really?” He asked, turning fully to her. “There’s nothing getting you through these long days and nights? Nothing you are looking forward to?”

Ashara’s armor felt tight on her chest. She fiddled with a strap, tightening her other hand on her staff. She wasn’t looking at Haleir. She wasn’t looking forward to anything, she realized suddenly. She couldn’t remember the last time she wasn’t looking forward to something. Even in the depths of her mother’s illness, she was always looking forward to the next day - to the possibility, however remote, that it would bring the answer she needed to save her.

“Not particularly,” she said finally.

“Well, aren’t you the model soldier. A pillar of the people.” The word he used was another ancient one, a word for a community leader, not unlike hahren. It felt like teasing and not like respect and now the greaves of her armor felt too tight, too.

“We should walk the perimeter.”

“Lead on, my lady.”

He reminded her suddenly of Tamaris. His endless teasing. His slit throat. She softened, and she ached, and she took a deep breath before speaking to him again.

“So, three sisters?”

“Yes, and three brothers. All younger. Honestly, the mess hall feels only slightly more chaotic than the house I grew up in.”

Ashara had to snort at that. “I can only imagine. I’m lucky to be an only child, I suppose.”

“Yes. Fewer people to disappoint.” He said it in the airy way he had said everything else so far, but the words still caught her off guard. She snuck a look at his face. It was impassive. They were halfway around the cluster of six tents - she decided to venture another question.

“How old are you?” she asked.

“Twenty-one.”

“Ah, still such a young tree in this forest,” she said, in the best imitation of the ancient Elvhen she’d met several times in her life, each of them speaking of her youth like it was a shock and an honor and a tragedy all at once. Haleir rolled his eyes and sighed.

“And you’re, what, only a year or so older? We’re both young trees, kinswoman.”

“How old are your siblings?”

Haleir listed them, from oldest (nineteen) to youngest (ten-year-old twins). All of them were mages, and all of them were intensely annoying in different ways according to Haleir. They still lived in a remote house in Oruvun with his parents, although Haleir had high hopes that his eldest sister (the nineteen-year-old) might have heard whether or not she was accepted into the university in the capital now. She was a gifted spirit medium, and wanted to study the history of spirits integrating into human societies.

“That’s a rare gift,” Ashara said.

“Indeed,” Haleir replied, in a tone that sounded wistful and resentful at once.

They passed the rest of their watch in idle conversation and gossip about their fellow recruits (three of the warriors had been caught in a rather compromising position and disciplined for fraternization - everyone wanted to know if Eshne’s two lieutenants were bonded to each other or not, or perhaps if the three of them were all bonded to each other, as they seemed very close), and then it was time for Catriona and another recruit to take their place. Ashara dropped off to sleep almost at once, and dreamed of a field that went on and on forever, no beginning and no end, where there was no purpose and no desire and no pain.

*

As they journeyed, Eshne drilled them in combat magic, directing their mana to strengthen every fiber of their bodies. She added weights to their armor. When they broke for lunch she swathed herself in a barrier and commanded them to attack her with the blunted blades they carried so they could feel the sting of her barrier snapping back at them. She flaunted her ability to warp the Fade around herself and pass through solid stone undetected to surprise unwary recruits on watch. She drilled them in their attacks and counterattacks with their blades, in switching from attacking with their staves to drawing their blade. On the last night of their journey, Ashara and several other recruits took a chance to bathe in a cold pool near their campsite, and she looked down at her body and found that it was becoming a little foreign to her - she’d always been slight, and lanky, and now her arms and shoulders and legs were thicker with muscle. She marveled at the change. She’d already gotten used to her new hairstyle, which a Rivaini seer had braided into a multitude of tight, tiny braids for her on one of her first days of training.

She still had the scars of course, on both her arms. That had not changed. That would never change. That was fine. She was making things right. She was here in the woods, far from everyone she knew, exhausted and in pain and numb all the way to the pit of her stomach and the crown of her head and the balls of her feet. She didn’t feel like a soldier yet. She didn’t feel like anything yet. But that was fine. She didn’t need to think or feel.

(Some distant part of her mind screamed against that this wasn’t normal, not for her, at least, but she ignored it.)

She’d been able to sense the changes in the Veil as they drew closer and closer to their destination. It was like a woven blanket all around her, at all times, and as they got further from the city she could feel the tight weave of that blanket begin to loosen, and something pushing through that looser weave, like a thousand searching fingers. Everyone else began to notice it, too, with excited murmurs and nervous glances.

The woods around them were growing denser and denser. Eshne stopped them as they got to a point when it was getting hard to see further than ten feet ahead or so, and not just because of the waning sunlight above them. She commanded them to get into formation and they all complied, and then she commanded her lieutenants to give each recruit a small satchel of supplies. Ashara felt the shape of the small leather pouch as discreetly as she could when she received hers. There were three vials inside.

“As most of you have guessed, since you are no longer the witless children you were when you started your training, and are in fact almost worthy to call yourselves soldiers of the People, you are here to find and fight spirits. To gather enough spirit essence to craft a blade worthy of an arcane warrior. You have three vials - a small health potion, a small lyrium potion, and an empty one. When you have filled the empty one entirely with spirit essence, you may return to this point. We will leave at dawn - with or without you. You are dismissed.”

As Ashara took off with her fellow recruits, darting through the trees, mana already surging out and seeking any sign of nearby spirits, she felt truly light for the first time in weeks. This was it. She’d almost reached the end of this part of the road. She would be an arcane warrior. She would be safe, and worthy, and the fact that she survived would mean something.

Eshne hadn’t said anything about working in groups, but she found herself running alongside Haleir, Catriona, and Tayana. Her mothers were both Seers in Rivain, survivors of the Dairsmuid Circle massacre, and she had an excellent attunement to nearby spirits. She was the one who guided them to the rocky outcropping where the Veil was so thin Ashara could feel the Fade streaming through every part of her body, where the weave was so loose that it was little better than tissue paper.

“Here,” Tayana said, tossing back her thick, braided black hair over her shoulder. “Ashara, you have some training as a rift mage, right? Do you think you could weaken this area even further and pull some spirits through?”

“Do you really think that’s what Eshne wants us to do?” Catriona asked. She was a more nervous sort, the child of parents who’d been in Kinloch Hold when it fell to blood mages.

“We will always do what we must,” Haleir replied - a mantra that had been drilled into them these past few weeks.

They looked to Ashara. This was her moment. They needed her. She reached for the Veil, and tugged the thin strands hard, and felt the Fade pour in around them, swirl, and begin to take on glowing forms.

_You have never once been enough._

The voice in Ashara’s head was so loud it brought her to her knees. It was multiple voices - Falon’Din’s, Velriel’s, her father’s, her mother’s, Tamaris’s, Gwynne’s brothers, the templar in Orlais, Dorian’s, Claudia’s, Lucius’s. There was a sucking pressure in her chest. The smite. There was a templar. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t use her magic. She would fail, she would fail, she would fail -

_Little Dreamer, it will be alright, if you only let me in - let me in and you will be enough -_

Golden light filled her vision, and then cleared, and then she could see again, move again. Her vision was filled with the many eyes of a terror demon, inches from her face. The gold glow of a paralysis spell surrounded its long, knobby limbs.

“Finish it!” Catriona shouted. She was doing battle with a greenish wisp, freezing it in ice and then bringing down her staff in a sharp arc, shattering it. There were other wisps, too - two surrounding Haleir, and another three by Tayana. None surrounded Ashara. Just the terror demon, tall and too-long and too many eyes and its voice in her head, the voice of every person she’d ever feared to disappoint, of every person she had already disappointed -

The paralysis ended. The demon reached back, its talons gleaming in the flash of the spells flying through the air, and raked its claws across Ashara’s chest. She fell back. Her breastplate had protected her but only just and the demon crouched over her now, its voice still ringing in her mind -

_Little Dreamer -_

She raised her hands and shot fire through them. The demon reared back and shrieked, a bone-rattling sound that stunned every one of them. It dove down, disappeared in a flash of green light - Ashara had just gotten to her feet when it reappeared at Tayana’s side, its talons spread and ready to strike. No. Ice this time. A flurry of it, as cold as she could imagine, as cold as her own fear. Another shriek, another flash of green light as it disappeared and reappeared, this time by Catriona.

_You can’t protect them all, Little Dreamer. You never could._

It was Livia’s voice this time. Vito’s, too.

Stonefist, this time, she would knock the demon back, away from Catriona, whose eyes were wide in terror, but the spell sputtered, died, never left her fingers. Her staff. Why wasn’t she using her staff? Why wouldn’t her legs move? She staggered as a bolt of energy hit her, one of the wisps finally noticing her, she wasn’t thinking straight, she knew she’d learned and studied the strategies for battle and passed all her tests but now she could recall none of it, couldn’t even process who was where or what to do next because the demon was _right_ , she had never been enough, she was the daughter of the Dread Wolf and the Inquisitor and yet she’d lived her life a silly sheltered idiot girl who flew from one idea to the next and did not know what she wanted to do with her life and could not protect people when it mattered most -

Purple light swirled beneath the demon’s feet once, twice, three times - hexes, entropic magic, all coming from Haleir, and then a crackle of lightning from Tayana, and then a burst of arcane energy from Catriona. They were gritting their teeth through the attacks of the remaining wisps, focusing their attention on the demon. Doing what she should be doing. She stood and stared instead, watching as the demon succumbed to their onslaught, fragmenting into a thousand shards of green light, evaporating into the air around them.

_This isn’t over, Little Dreamer -_

The voice was a whisper, coiled in the back of her skull.

She stood there, numb, and watched her fellow recruits finish the fight. She did at least remember to strengthen the Veil around them, as much as she was able, so nothing else would slip through. Haleir approached her.

“Lethallan, are you alright?”

 _No_ , she thought.

“Yes,” she said.

“It was trying to possess you, wasn’t it? I am impressed that you fended it off.”

_It’s nothing. It’s the most basic fucking thing any mage needs to be able to do. I’m nothing. I shouldn’t have survived that day in Clermont._

“I’m sorry,” she said, the words slow and thick as syrup on her tongue.

Haleir frowned, concern she did not deserve on his face.

“Sit down. Give me your vial. I’ll collect some of the essence for you. I hope we don’t have to do this again.”

Tayana and Catriona were watching her from the other side of the rocky outcropping. Their eyes glinted in the darkness. She just heard Haleir’s voice when he approached them - _she’s a powerful Dreamer, she just got unlucky, demons are always attracted to our kind, should we tell Eshne or no?_ Ashara willed herself to move from her spot on the ground, to scream, to speak, to do anything, but all of that felt impossible. She wanted to melt into the earth and disappear. She’d faced demons before, though never in the flesh. And the demon wasn’t what her mind circled back to over and over as she watched the other recruits scooping viscous, silvery-blue liquid into their empty vials. What she circled back to over and over again was that the demon only said what she was already thinking. What she already knew. What she had been trying to bury in her routine of training, studying, and taking orders. She should not have survived that day in Clermont. Maybe she shouldn’t even have survived Falon’Din. Maybe she should never have been born.

*

Miraculously, there was enough spirit essence to fill Ashara’s vial, mostly from the terror demon itself. She tucked her vial away and then refused to look at it again. It filled her with shame. She’d done so little. She didn’t deserve to pass the test. But she couldn’t bear the thought of returning empty-handed, either. She looked Eshne in the eye only as much as she had to.

Of the ten recruits who’d gone out that night, eight were able to retrieve enough spirit essence to qualify. The two who did not were quietly sent to a different company of recruits when they returned to the fort, days later. They would finish their training in a different discipline, and still serve in Enasan’s army. But their trials were not over. During the one day of rest they took upon returning, the forge-masters made them each a spirit blade, which Eshne presented to them with great ceremony and reverence. Ashara marveled at the lazurite hilt, so light in her hands, and so heavy in her heart. She didn’t deserve this. She had failed. She was going to keep failing.

“You have all come far since we first met,” Eshne said when they were all seated, their blades in their laps. “And you have much further to go. The Dirth’ena Enasalin is a long road, and there is one more hill you must climb before you can truly begin your journey. All of this has only been a prelude.”

Eshne drew her own blade, and the empty hilt flickered to life, a blue blade materializing where there had been nothing before.

“Your blade is but a vessel, just as you are,” she said. “That’s what a mage is. A vessel for a greater power, for the power that shapes the world. Once, all of our people had that calling, that responsibility. And even then, warriors of our kind were set apart. We trust our magic so fully that we know it can shield us better than anything created by Elvhen hands. We hone our minds and our bodies so thoroughly that we become the most perfect vessel possible for that magic. And finally, we humble ourselves enough to acknowledge that even we cannot fight alone. We must attract a spirit to answer our call, to fuel our blade, to be our guide. That is what you must do now.

“There will be no physical training for the next two days. You will not return to your barracks. We will take you down to the prison cells in the lowest part of the fort with your blades and your simplest clothes, and you will take lyrium, and you will connect with the Fade and seek the help of a spirit who will call your blade home. For some of you this will be easy. For others, it will be harder. And for some of you still, it will be impossible. But that is the journey that all of you must take.”

Ashara tried to tell herself that she would not fail.

She had grown up around spirits, many of them her father’s oldest friends. She interacted with them every night in the Fade. Surely she would be one of the ones who found this easy (just as so many things had come easily to her in her life, so many things she didn’t deserve, like health and safety and wealth and and and - ). She did not even need the lyrium and left it in its vial when they shut her in her cell. She could just close her eyes and meditate and she would be in the Fade, her second home, she could do this, she was fine -

The Fade was cold when she arrived, the kind of cold that only came with Despair, and then she knew that she would fail.

*

The days grew longer as the month drew to a close. Ellana was sure of it. Even if there was less sunlight now as fall went on, each hour was somehow longer. Every moment was spent waiting. Waiting for that next report from Orlais (Villiers and de Pelletier skirmishing near Jader, Divine Victoria calling for a swift end to the fighting, the nobility growing increasingly more divided, claiming that de Pelletier’s fight left them open to those dangerous rabbits to the south by pulling the imperial army north). Waiting for Ashara to come home.

She knew there was to be a ceremony when the training finished. She had the day and time marked perfectly in her mind. She and Solas had gone to their favorite tailor and had new clothes made for the occasion - nothing elaborate, but something fresh, something that would show their daughter that they were proud of her, as always. Ellana still felt uneasy looking at the muster rolls Abelas presented her with regularly, thinking that her daughter’s name would soon be on them. But she knew she had to respect Ashara’s decision, and support it. So she would go to the fort in her new red brocade overcoat and black leg wraps, with her bondmate at her side in his matching tunic, and she would beam proudly at her child, and they would welcome her home for however long they had before she had to go again, and begin this new phase in her life.

So Ellana was stunned when Solas answered their door and received a note from a courier, telling her to come to the fort a day early, and retrieve Ashara.

“What could have happened?” She asked, scanning the note again, feeling her pulse in her throat.

“I do not know. She is not injured - Eshne would have sent word if that was the case. I cannot imagine otherwise. Perhaps she does not wish to attend the ceremony tomorrow and wants more time at home?”

Ellana could tell that his optimism was for her benefit. That even he did not believe those words.

Eshne was the one who greeted them at the fort, looking somber. She bowed deeply to Solas.

“Tar’len, I wish I had better news for you,” she said. “But there is no other way around it. Your daughter has failed to become an arcane warrior. Not from lack of skill, or ability - but because of a deep trouble in her heart and soul.”

Ellana’s mind was already racing. What was wrong, what was wrong, what did they need to do, how could they fix it, when would they see her.

“What happened, precisely?” Solas asked. His voice was calm but his lips were pressed tight together.

“As you know, the final step in their training is the creation of their spirit blade. They each needed to attract a spirit to their hilt. Your daughter - gifted though she is, and a Dreamer to boot - she has been mired so deeply in fear and doubt that she attracts nothing but Despair to her side. She is safe - she was never in any danger of possession, as she herself will tell you - but she cannot complete her training until she deals with this weight on her heart. We spoke, and agreed that it would be best for her to do so at home.”

Ellana could hardly believe it. Ashara had always been so serious, true, even as a tiny babe with big blue eyes, but that seriousness was always wrapped up in joy, and curiosity, and optimism… whenever she had nightmares about a demon taking her daughter, she had never, ever imagined it would be Despair. But wasn’t this exactly what she feared, letting her go so quickly after all that happened? She should have pushed harder. She should have forced her to stay home -

Ellana emerged from the fog of those thoughts only once Ashara was actually in front of her. Then her world was clear. Ashara looked different. Her hair was tightly braided, and then all of the braids were pulled back behind her head into one ponytail. Her face looked bare and stark without its usual riot of curls. There was something small in her posture, too. Something withdrawn.

“Hello,” Ellana said. She didn’t know what else to say. Not here.

“Hello,” Ashara replied.

None of them spoke much on their journey home. When they got there, and Ellana asked if she wanted to talk, she only shook her head and said:

“I want to sleep. Maybe for a whole week.”

The words struck a chord in Ellana that she never wanted to hear again - of those weeks after the loss of her arm, the absorption of the Inquisition into the Chantry. Of finally, fully, losing Solas. Those weeks in the small Val Royeaux apartment Cassandra, Leliana, and Josephine arranged for her, where she struggled to leave her bed each day and do the work that needed to be done. But her daughter probably was tired - Ellana knew exactly how hard Cullen trained their new troops. So it wasn’t until the third day she spent emerging from her room only when absolutely necessary, that Ellana finally went in and sat at her side and put her hand on Ashara’s shoulder and asked:

“Da’vhenan - what happened?”

Ashara did not answer for a long, long moment. Her body was tense, one big coil of angry muscle (how much she’d gained in so short a time). Then, in a wet voice, she spoke.

“I feel so worthless, Mamae.”

She tried to speak again but the words wouldn’t come, and Ellana didn’t need to hear any other words. None of the other words mattered. All that mattered was that her bright, brave, kind daughter felt like she meant nothing, and her own heart was cut in half by that thought. Ellana bent down and hugged her as well as she could.

“You’re not, sweet girl. You’re not. You are worth so much.”

She said it over and over and over again, until she could feel some of the tension ebb from Ashara, and her tears had quieted. Until Ellana herself wasn’t sure she could say it again without crying herself. Ashara burrowed further into her pillow, so far that Ellana couldn’t even quite hear her next words.

“Then why don’t I feel that way?”

Ellana had faced ancient gods and hungry dragons and stood in the heart of a living mountain, but nothing frightened her as much as the thought that she might not know how to explain this, how to help her.

“I don’t know. But we’ll figure it out. I promise you that.”

She stayed with her the rest of the afternoon, mostly in silence, and nothing outside of that room mattered anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :( :( :(
> 
> Thank you for reading! I promise it gets better!
> 
> Prompts, suggestions, comments and general discussion more than welcome here or on my [Tumblr](https://buttsonthebeach.tumblr.com/)!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait, everyone! This chapter has some depictions of depression, including depressive thoughts, but it is not extensive. It also has a tiiiiny bit of smut. Stop reading when Solas and Ellana start kissing and pick back up after the ** mark.

Solas was not ordinarily in the position of keeping his family together. Not because he was adverse to it, but because Ellana so readily, capably, and naturally filled that role. She had her tempers, her fears, her worries, but they never seemed to stick to her. She didn’t let them. She felt them - fully, utterly - and then she let them go. He and Ashara were not like that. Things stuck to them, wedged deep. Feelings took root in both their hearts and went rotten, if they were not careful. If there was any part of himself that he would have spared his daughter, it would have been that tendency.

It would seem that it was too late for that.

Despite all that, in the days that followed Ashara’s return from training, he found himself in the position of comforting wife and daughter alike. He rarely saw Ellana cry, but when she emerged from Ashara’s room on that third day, she went to him at once, buried her face in his chest, and wept.

“I am so afraid for her,” she managed, at last. “For us. For Enasan. For our people.”

He cupped her face in his hands and brushed away the last of her tears. He kissed her cheeks and pressed their foreheads together.

“I know, arasha. I am too.”

This happened on and off in the days that followed. They would spend time with Ashara, do their best to raise her spirits, and inevitably she would drift away and withdraw, and then he would be faced with Ellana’s pacing or rapidfire question, or again with tears. There was one benefit to that. It distanced him from his own pain and fear. His only focus was on his family. On seeing both of them smile again. He canceled a long-planned trip to continue his work strategically weakening the Veil, because though he knew Ellana would rise to the occasion if left alone with Ashara, he did not want to force her to do so.

Especially because there were some things she struggled with that he felt he might be uniquely qualified to unravel - such as the fact that she asked him for a draught that might dull her ability to dream. That concerned him most. Ashara had treasured her ability to walk the Fade ever since it manifested. While she could choose to sleep and dream naturally, she rarely did so - she wanted to use every moment of every day and night, waking or sleeping, to learn and grow and explore.

“I just don’t have the energy for it,” she said when he asked why she wanted to dream as little as possible. “Please, Papae.”

He relented, and brewed the tonic, and gave it to her each night before bed, and for the first time in a decade, he slept each night with only the faintest glimmer of his daughter’s presence. It was too much like those awful days after Clermont. Even in waking, she felt absent. Her thousand daily questions and thoughts and theories and dreams dried up. She drifted from room to room, activity to activity, with little energy for any of it.

“You may feel more energized if you did not dull your connection to the Fade each night,” he suggested gently, when this had gone on for a week. She shrugged. “You know that I would guard you, if your concern is that you may be haunted by Despair and Fear.”

“That’s not it.”

They were sitting in the study. Motes of dust clouded the sunbeams falling through the open window. The room smelled like parchment, ink, and drying plaster. He’d redone one of the murals in the room recently. All of these were things Ashara loved and cherished. All of them. She often recreated this room for herself in the Fade, using it to store memories, information, impressions. Today she had only come into the room at his gentle insistence. She’d wound herself in a thick wool blanket and spent the morning staring out of the window, claiming she was too tired for anything else. This was more than natural disappointment at her failure to complete her training. He and Ellana had given her a week. He needed to press on.

“If that is not the case, then why continue to seek a dreamless sleep? Has it been more difficult to control your connection to the Fade since Clermont?”

“No.”

Solas put down the quill he’d been using. He crossed the room and sat at her side.

“I am worried for you, da’vhenan. Is there some reason that you do not wish to discuss these things with your mother and I?”

She shrugged, and would not meet his eyes. She pulled a loose thread on the blanket.

“Perhaps you might like to discuss them with Claudia. Or Lucius.”

“No.”

Solas felt a twisting in his chest. He could not force her to voice her feelings. But he could assure her that she was not alone in them. He knew what it was like - to wake every day with the taste of your failure in your mouth, a heaviness in your chest that threatened to crush you, a certainty that nothing in the world mattered, least of all you, and that you were better off dead.

“I have been where you are before, Ashara. Whatever it is you are feeling - there is no shame in it.”

She met his eyes at last and held his gaze for a long moment. She nodded, then curled deeper into the blanket and pillowed her cheek on the arm of the couch, and closed her eyes.

Ellana was not home until late that evening, and when she walked through the door her lips were pursed and her shoulders were tense.

“Ferelden will not pledge to aid us.”

Solas shook his head.

“That is a frustrating blow. I thought they would have jumped at the chance to strike a blow against Orlais, and to prevent others from suffering under Orlesian occupation as they did for so long.”

Ellana flung herself carelessly into an armchair and pinched her forehead.

“There are few alive and in power now who actually remember those days. Maric, Loghain, Meghren - they are all figures for the history books now. And I think they fear Orlais’s reprisal if they side with us and lose the war.”

“We won’t lose this war,” Solas said. He could feel the power rising, gathering in him at the thought, from the tips of his toes to the crown of his head. He’d known a thousand years and more of war and he had fought for ideals and now he had a home and family and he would fight a hundred thousand times for that than he ever had before.

“You sound very confident.”

“We have the orb, Ellana. With its power I could -”

He knew it was the wrong thing to say even before her eyes snapped open.

“You could what? Bring every nation in Thedas down on our heads after you turn the entire Orlesian army to stone?”

_ Yes. _ He thought.  _ And they would deserve it. _ He swallowed those words.

“There are subtler ways of using such power.”

“Considering that Caralina’s agents have uncovered trails indicating that news of our ‘irregularities’ has spread to Ferelden, forgive me if I’m not a big believer in the subtlety of ancient magic right now.”

How his power flared again at those words - how he wanted to rail against that belief, to say that it was unfair of her to treat him like an enemy now, that there were bound to be setbacks in their plan but it was  _ their _ plan, not his. He swallowed that, too. She was agitated - standing abruptly from the armchair and moving to the couch instead - and he did not need to add fuel to her fire.

“Arlanal brought up the possibility that we should reverse everything you have done to the Veil so far,” Ellana said. “At least until this business with Orlais is resolved. Maybe for a while after. She assures me that you have not passed the point of no return yet in your work. Is that so?”

There was something about her posture - one leg bent at the knee and resting on the other, her arm resting on the back of the couch, a certain hardness in her eyes - that made Solas straighten his back and shoulders. She looked like the Inquisitor again, he realized with a start. Not like his bondmate. He was giving a report, not going over the day’s events as they usually did.

“That is correct. But if we were to reverse it all entirely -” Solas tried to keep his tone neutral but he couldn’t. Not with the thought that rose immediately to the surface of his mind. “We would lose twenty-two years of work if we did that. It would take me another twenty years to reach this point again.”

This point, which was not even an impressive one - this point where magic was a whisper easier, where one in ten young elves demonstrated magical abilities before the age of twelve, where he himself found the deep, deep humming of the Fade’s wellspring, that source of immortality, only a little easier to hear. In another twenty years, Ellana would be past seventy. Ashara, forty. If they reversed all this now -

“I know,” Ellana said. Her voice was only a little gentler than it had been before.

They went to bed not long after that, and though she rolled over and kissed his shoulder before she drifted off, Solas was left awake, remembering how big a gulf there could be between two people in the same bed.

*

A month passed like that - Ellana gruff and tense and Ashara half a ghost - a month in which de Pelletier and Villiers fought in the courts and battlefields of Orlais. De Pelletier had half the country’s chevaliers but Villiers had the approval of the Chantry (more or less, as Leliana wrote to them). Solas thought of the burnt brown and gold wastes of the Exalted Plains where he’d watched Wisdom die and wondered if they were scorched and covered in angry wooden structures and restless dead once more. If anything like his friend lingered there now.

When he searched the Fade in those areas there was nothing that reminded him of Wisdom - only echoes of war, past and present. Solas hated the inevitability of death and bloodshed even as he longed to find Orlais’s two pretenders to the throne and fill their minds with acid and thorns and the cold bitter fear they’d wrapped around his daughter’s heart, even as he would gladly spill every drop of their blood if it meant he would see his bondmate and his child smile again. 

He could not share these thoughts with them. They were not Ashara’s burdens to bear and they would alarm Ellana, who he suspected was beginning to fear what he might do if these matters came to a head. He should not have mentioned his certainty that they would not lose the war. But what was the point of all of his power and knowledge and experience if he could not use them to protect the people he loved?

_ You know that this is the way of the world, my friend _ . That was what Wisdom would say if she was here. He’d walked the marble and crystal halls of floating palaces and witnessed a hundred dramas like this play out across the centuries. Raw power did not count for everything. Cunning, subtlety, perception - these counted too. Ellana knew this. How would she continue to grow if she could live centuries - and if she didn’t -

Solas realized that he did not wish to be alone with these thoughts, and so he turned his thoughts north, past the Free Marches, to Antiva, and Thom Rainier. The man who was perhaps his dearest friend. He did not frequently interrupt Thom’s dreams - they corresponded by letter, usually - but it had happened often enough in the past twenty years that Thom was not shocked when Solas appeared in the busy Markham street he was dreaming of, walking calmly at his side.

“This is the real you, I take it?” Thom said after he noticed him.

“Indeed. I apologize if my intrusion is unwelcome.”

“Not at all. Apparently my brain couldn't come up with anything better a shopping trip, anyway.”

“Uncomplicated dreams are a gift - they are often signs of a content heart, and a peaceful mind.”

“Or a hearty meal. I was so sleepy after the stew our chef whipped up tonight that I fell asleep at the table, you know. Josephine was mortified. Alessandro just laughed at me and called me an old man, disrespectful little blighter.” There was nothing but affection in Thom’s voice when he spoke of their son, so much that two spirits of Love danced ahead of them in a dizzy swirl, appearing as brothers off on a grand adventure together.

“Speaking of our children - I know Josephine wrote in her letter how angry we both were for what happened to Ashara. She has been writing to every stuffed-shirt noble she knows in Orlais with threats and promises alike. She wants them to refuse to go to war with Enasan.”

“That is gratifying to hear.” Solas nearly added  _ because we fear we may lose the friends we have left _ but thought better of it. He was grateful Thom was not a mage, and could not read the nervous flutter of his emotions in the Fade.

“How is your Junebug doing these days?”

Solas couldn’t help but snort. “I do wish Varric hadn’t gotten half of our friends calling her that.”

“Well, you do know that half of us call her that only to irritate  _ you _ , don’t you?”

Solas sighed but did not fight back against the old jokes - how Varric felt it was only right that Ellana’s daughter have some connection to the name June, since Ellana had been marked for him. Solas was only grateful that Dorian felt that calling her a bug was undignified and that Bull liked “Kid” or “Little Boss” too much to adopt it. How simple things were, when the biggest fear he had for his daughter was what effect this nickname would have on her - what she would take away from Varric’s insistence on it.

“She is not well,” Solas said at last, quietly. There weren’t spirits of Love dancing around them now. The ghostly streets of Markham were empty and pale. “At least - not in her heart. Not in her spirit. Not in her mind.”

“That shouldn’t be a surprise,” Thom said gravely, crossing his arms over his barrel-like chest. Age had not stooped or withered him - not in real life or in the Fade. He was bigger, and even more imposing, with greater bulk on his frame. “I am sure you still remember the first time you killed a person. The first time someone really, truly tried to kill you. The first time you watched a comrade-in-arms die. For Ashara, those days were all one.”

Solas decided not to mention the templar Ashara and Lucius had been forced to kill in Orlais two years before. They disclosed the details of how they saved Ellana’s life to as few people as possible.

“You are right, of course. It is a trauma to anyone. But for Ashara that trauma seems to have come with a need to withdraw from the whole world, and then to feel angry with herself for that withdrawal. I had told you of her desire to join Enasan’s army as an arcane warrior, yes?”

“Indeed. And I think Ellana had just written that her training was unsuccessful. Or maybe it was Leliana.”

“Likely Leliana. I don’t think I have seen Ellana write personal correspondence in weeks. Which is a problem of another sort entirely.”

Mage or no, Thom was a good enough friend - a good enough man - to sense Solas’s heaviness. He paused and looked Solas square in the face.

“It must be a lot to handle on your own. I have often wished that we all lived closer together, you know. For all our sakes. I know how difficult it was for me when Josephine’s mother passed on - being there for both her and Alessandro. It would have been good to have a friend.”

The emotions that engulfed Solas in that moment were not a wave like they were in waking - here in the Fade he could feel and identify and mirror every facet of them, even as they overwhelmed him. Yes, he wished they had remained physically closer to their friends from the Inquisition - and yet in the most important cases the emotional ties had never weakened.

And in a world with no Veil, they wouldn’t have to be separated. In a world that did not fear the power of Elvhen magic, there could be an eluvian in each of their houses.

He had to see that world become a reality - but he feared what it would cost.

“We do have friends in these moments,” Solas said at last. “Why do you think I am here?”

“I assumed because walking along a street in Markham was far more interesting than what everyone else was dreaming about,” Thom said, and the wry smile on his face radiated warmth that Solas could feel. This was a man who had bled for him and Ellana alike, who had been the one who most clearly understood what he was going through when he turned aside from his path of darkness and returned to Ellana. He was still on their side. They had friends, however alone he seemed to feel lately. Whatever gulfs he faced in waking - he could cross them.

*

In the two weeks that followed that night, Solas was able to make several swift day trips to planned sites where he needed to measure his work with the Veil. Ellana was not quite as busy, and she could linger near Ashara (a warning sign in and of itself - Ashara hated to be coddled, had been the baby who insistently declared  _ me do  _ from the time she could talk in any language). Villiers had de Pelletier on the defensive, and there were rumblings that he was pressuring the Chantry to launch a formal investigation into the Veil around Enasan, and Solas wanted to personally assure himself that Arlanal’s agents had been successful at strengthening the zones they assumed would be investigated. It was good work. As much as he did not care for small talk with strangers (and as much as he loathed it when people recognized him for who he was), it was good to get out into the country he helped build. To remind himself that in the end, he had done good for Thedas and for the world, even if the horror of his mistakes was not totally reversed. It would be, someday.

He was filled with the peace of that thought when he returned from such a trip to find that Ellana was up late waiting for him.

“De Pelletier surrendered to Villiers two days ago outside Val Royeaux,” she said. “Cassandra is going to officially crown him soon. And then his first stop is Clermont, where he will demand that Chantry approved mages and templars have access to our land so they can examine the state of the Veil here.”

So the blow had come. They had been unable to delay this any longer.

“Not unfettered access, surely,” he said, hoping to help her see some sort of bright side.

“I hope not. The most heavily affected areas are very rural, and on the southern fringes of the country. I doubt they’d go all the way there. But they are  _ looking _ for a reason to go to war with us, Solas. Even as subtle as the changes in other parts of the Veil are - if Vivienne is with them, and she has been studying rift magic -” She stood. Paced. “We have to reverse all of it, Solas. We have to. As quickly as we can.”

And the other blow. The one that seemed to stop all of his blood in his veins. He had hoped, hoped, hoped she would not ask this of him. He had given her this power all those years ago - said he would only ever pursue options that she approved of, that he would stop at any time - but how he’d always wished they would never have to be at odds. He would keep his promise. But he would fight against it one last time.

“There must be other options.”

“Of course there are. But this is the one I have chosen, and the council agrees.”

He started to clench his hands and forced himself to stop.

“I must disagree. Weakening the Veil will do incalculable good for our people - for spirits - for mages - and therefore, for Thedas.”

“Yes - in hundreds of years. It could do incalculable harm to us now. It already has. Think of what happened in the temple to Ashara. Imagine we had never tampered with the Veil in the first place. Imagine a world where our daughter was never possessed and nearly killed by Falon’Din-”

“I can imagine that world, and it is a world where you are dead.”

His voice was harsh. His heart was beating fast. Ellana was frozen in place.

“If it had not been for what Ashara learned in that temple, we could not have saved you. You cannot be short-sighted with this. Yes, this war would be a great evil, but perhaps it would be a greater evil to undo everything we have done just to avoid it. Perhaps someday this war will be something we look back on in the same light as the tragedy that nearly befell Ashara-”

Now Ellana was on her feet, coming towards him.

“How can you discuss an entire war as something we just have to get through? Thousands of people could die, Solas. We are putting the fate of our entire race at stake!”

“Because that is what thousands of years of life have taught me! Whenever we have this discussion you always ask that I defer to your view of the scenario. Do you truly think there is no validity in my view on it?”

He could see Ellana’s chest rise and fall with the force of each breath she took. She was struggling to remain in control of her temper. Or was it fear? Her eyes were wide. She was only a foot or two away but it felt like there was a chasm between them.

“We cannot decide this in a single night,” he said finally. Diffuse, diffuse. They were partners, not enemies. She was tired and worried. Nothing mattered as much as her feelings - not even his incessant, idiotic need to be right, burning low in his stomach like a fire that never went out. “Allow me to ask this - that I come with you to Clermont. That we continue to discuss our options on the way. I will have a team of Arlanal’s specially trained mages in position to deactivate the magic as quickly as possible standing by. The instant we reach a decision, I will send to them. You have my word.”

Ellana gave him a long, hard look.

“Do I?”

He felt his heart break.

“Of course you do, vhenan.”

The word softened her - but only a little. She ran her hand over her face. She looked more tired, and more old, than he’d ever seen her.

“I’m going to bed.”

There was no invitation in her words.

He sat in the study for a while after she left, studying his murals, wondering if perhaps it was time to refresh the rest of them, or repaint something new entirely. Imagining a world where it was him alone in this house, and Ellana was buried beneath a tree in the backyard. Or would he bury her at Skyhold? He felt sick at either thought. And yet when he went to their bed she did not stir at his presence, and he did not reach out to touch her as he called for the Fade and tried to sleep. It was like those early days in Kirkwall, when he told her that he would stay by her side whether she chose to love and forgive him or not, and it would be enough. It wasn’t a lie (it wasn’t). He could stay there alone in that bed, and be happy - as long as he knew she was alive somewhere in the world. Why, after more than twenty years together, couldn’t she understand that?

For the first time in weeks, Ashara was there when he entered the Fade. She’d already shaped the dream to resemble an ancient palace he’d shown her once, high in the sky above the plains that would become Ferelden one day. She had her arms wrapped tightly around herself and a determined look in her eyes.

“I want to come with you to Clermont,” she said at once.

He blinked, taken aback. “And why is that?”

“I want to be there. To stand there. To just - see. To understand. And if they’ll let me, I want Villiers to look me in the eye when he says he had nothing to do with what happened there.”

The palace was one of Ghilan’nain’s, an airy place where she and Andruil could come to watch their griffons in flight, or to dispose of enemies by pushing them from the highest parapet to the unforgiving earth far below, and Solas had always known it to be cool, if not outright cold. It was warm now, hot with Ashara’s rage and panic. He reached for those emotions and tried to soothe them - but Ashara sensed that, and her arms got tighter around her waist, as if she could hold on to those feelings.

“I do not know that such a trip will bring you peace,” he said.

“I did not say it would. But I want to go. I am going. There is no reason for you to stop me.”

He did not want to argue with her. He would let it lie for now. He was exhausted, even here, swimming in magic. There was so much anger, so much pain in his family right now. He had to carry it.

“I am pleased to see you here in the Fade,” he said. “I have missed your company.”

She shrugged. “I figured it was finally time to stop being so damned useless.”

“You are not useless, Ashara. I hope you do not think of yourself that way.”

She could not meet his gaze, and he knew she did. What primal sadness and anger he felt at that idea. She was his prized and perfect daughter. How dare the world make her think of herself as anything less.

“Look at this beautiful dream you have shaped for us,” he said. “It is real, and detailed, and you have never even been to this palace -”

“It’s one of Falon’Din’s memories.”

He could still picture it clear as the crystal of this palace - Ashara’s eyes flashing blue, a voice spilling forth from her mouth that was not her own.

“But you chose to come here willingly?”

“Yes. It’s not a bad memory. I would have liked to see it in person.”

_ And you will someday, _ Solas thought at once.  _ You will, you will, all of the magic will come back and you can have a palace like this, all your own, just as you deserve. _ But that was not a thought that would help her now.

“Then remember that something good came from one of the worst days of our lives. Remember that someday you may look back on this period of time in your life and think the same thing.”

Those words had not seemed to comfort her mother - but maybe they would work for her.

Ashara looked away from him. She stepped closer to the edge of the glittering palace, so close that it made his heart leap, as he remembered those helpless souls who were pushed from that spot, bound in chains.

“Maybe it will,” she said - but she did not sound like she believed her own words.

*

The three of them left for Clermont two days after that - silent and separate as if they were all strangers, even though they walked through the eluvians together, and then through the woods to the clearing where a temporary command center of sorts had been set up. It was a cluster of pavilions and tents - sleeping quarters for the entire council, for their own family, for all of the aides and attaches and assistants who had come along, for the small detachment of soldiers Abelas brought, for supplies, and finally a large, magically sealed tent where the council could meet in secrecy. They were all cream and gold, and lit by magelight, and tucked amongst the ancient green trees, and Solas felt again like he was in Elvhenan as they stood there observing the sight.

“Everyone settle in,” Ellana said to the assembled elves. “The council will meet after dinner to discuss the first round of talks with the Divine and Emperor Etienne. Our runners already confirmed that they have arrived in Clermont and are ready to meet in the morning.”

Solas’s eyes were on Ashara as his bondmate spoke. Had she come through these trees, bleeding and frightened and alone? Clermont was a scarce half-mile from here. It was possible. But if she was reliving anything at that moment, she did not betray it on her face. She only looked numb. He sent a calming wave of magic towards her, trying to reassure her, but she flinched at the insubstantial touch. She turned away and went towards the tent that someone had indicated was hers before he could speak to her.

“We should insist that she comes and eats with us,” Solas said when he and Ellana were headed towards their own tent.

“Should we?” Ellana said. “Or do you and I still need to speak without her?”

He let out a slow breath through his nose and tried to focus on the lovely stillness of the forest, and not on the headache he could already feel forming at that thought.

“I am not sure what else we can say on the subject,” he said.

They had discussed their disagreement every day since the trip to Clermont first arose. They had made no progress. He had offered a dozen stories from history, from his own personal experience, demonstrating why he felt they had to stay the course. She had listed every statistic she knew about the Orlesian army, and their own forces, and the number of elves who lived in Enasan versus the number who lived scattered throughout Thedas, the likelihood of other nations joining the fight for them or against them. Neither of them had convinced the other.

They were silent when they reached their tent. It was a large, fine thing - sturdy fabric on the outside but swaying silk on the inside, dividing sections for sleep and leisure. They both looked around before drifting to the small wooden table in the center of the first room, and sitting there, silent, across from one another. The sounds of the camp hummed around them. Irritated, Solas cast a ward with a sharp motion, blocking out all of those sounds - and then he regretted it. The silence between them was heavy as lead.

“I can’t believe we’re here again,” Ellana said finally, her voice soft. She was on the other side of the table - too far for him to reach.

“Where again, vhenan?” he asked.

“Having this argument again. Unable to agree on this again. I thought this fight was over twenty years ago. I suppose that was foolish of me.”

Solas took a breath. He let it fill his ribs and held it there a moment before letting it go. He thought back to those days, more than twenty years ago, tentative and new. He thought of the two of them in the old mountain sanctuary, her righteous fury, her insistence that he had as much responsibility to the world the Veil created as to the one it tore apart. The fact that in the end it was not logic or duty or honor that guided his actions, his decision to surrender. That it was love - simple and primal and all-encompassing - that led him to the path they both walked now. She had known that instinctively. 

That was Ellana’s gift. Her mind worked quietly, deeply, without words - she felt things first, and then let those feelings guide her until she could understand them, and speak them aloud. Not like him - his mind always a twisting, turning, howling place filled with thought after thought after thought, emotions shoved down where he did not have to feel them until they overwhelmed him at last.

Well. Perhaps it was time he tried to think the way she did. Perhaps that would help her see.

“I think we have said all we can for now of armies and history,” he said as he stood. “I feel as though I have not spoken to my bondmate in an age.”

He held out his hand. Ellana looked at it, and then up at him, and then she rose and went to him, and took it.

“I know,” she said. She ran her thumb over the back of his hand, and his skin prickled in response. “Do you want to go and lie down? I’m exhausted.”

The camp bed was not nearly as large or as comfortable as the one they had at home, but still they did not touch each other when they lay on top of its covers. Not until Solas reached out and took Ellana’s hand once more. There could be gulfs in any marriage, any partnership, yes - but they could be bridged. They had to be bridged. He would bridge this one.

He rolled onto his side, keeping their hands twined between them, and with his free hand, cupped her cheek, running his thumb from her cheekbone down to her neck, and her shoulder, and the remains of her left arm. Her skin prickled too, as his had moments before, and her eyes fluttered closed. He leaned in then, and kissed her cheek, as softly and slowly as if she were breakable, and he might break her (he almost had, so many, many times, and yet here they were).

“Why are you so afraid of me dying, Solas?” she asked without opening her eyes.

The question sought and found his heart like one of her arrows. But he had to answer it.

“Do you not fear my death?” he said.

Now Ellana rolled to face him, and opened her eyes. He could see every fine and tiny line that surrounded them, and the curve of each of her eyelashes.

“I do. I did, when we first fell in love. Before I knew. It was hard to look at Fen’Harel, creator of the Veil, bane of the Creators, the same way I looked at Solas, who once set himself on fire.”

Solas snorted, and edged closer (inch by inch, inch by inch) to her, until he could lean his nose against her forehead and breathe in the smell of her skin.

“But yes, I think of losing you sometimes, and it hurts,” she went on. She slipped one of her legs between his, and rubbed her forehead gently against his nose. He gave her a kiss there at that prompting, and felt her slight shiver at the touch. “It hurts more than anything else I can imagine. But I always think about losing you to violence in those moments. Not to age.”

There was the heart of that matter (and here was his heart in his arms). Here was the feeling he had to confront, the fear he had to feel, fully and utterly, for her to understand. He took a breath before he began.

“I fear that is precisely the problem with this conversation. To me, losing you to age is as unnatural and regrettable and preventable as losing you to a cloaked man in an alleyway. As frightening. As horrific.”

He imagined it. He imagined her silver-haired and frail and no longer breathing. He let that raw sadness pour into every word he spoke.

She took his hand.

“It doesn’t have to be, vhenan.”

He thought back to the day in Skyhold not long after she was healed from the near-fatal damage of the Anchor. How she’d warned him as they stood in the cold mountain air, that they would be back in this moment again someday - that she would not live forever. How he’d done his best then to swallow his fear and say that he understood, that he would be ready to face it someday. But even then - even then - in the back of his mind he’d always held on to hope. Yes, they may not weaken the Veil in time for her to reap the benefits of immortality, but there was a  _ chance _ , and that chance was everything -

As Solas’s fear vibrated through him he could feel the Veil reacting, and an idea occurred to him. They had reversed the changes to the Veil in this area, it was true, but perhaps he could still see -

“May I try something with my magic?” he asked. She nodded. “Relax, then,” he went on, running his free hand up and down her back, slow and sure, until he felt her begin to relax. He continued rubbing her back, and called on the oldest, quietest part of his magic, the hum so distant, so locked beyond the Veil that he could barely hear it - the deep, unfathomable wave of eternity that sustained him. He called it further into his body, and then sent it through his palm into Ellana’s back, along her spine, past the old scars, through the spiderweb of veins and arteries that kept her alive, into her bones - he had tried this before but she had not felt it, but maybe, maybe, if he hoped hard enough now, if the Veil might still remember and respond -

Ellana drew in a sharp breath.

“What was that?”

Solas’s eyes were wet with tears that he hadn’t realized were gathering.

“That is what we have lost. What I took from our people. The touch of eternity. It is all I want for you. For our daughter and for her children and theirs. That is what you say we need to give up to appease Cassandra and all of the humans who want us dead.”

Ellana let out a slow, shuddering breath. Solas withdrew the magic. The Veil around them was disturbed now - so it was true, and the weakening had spread further than they anticipated. He would need to make repairs before they slept that night. He wanted to wipe the tears from his cheeks but he couldn’t let go of Ellana - her warmth, her closeness.

“I love you,” she said quietly into the hollow of his throat, like it was a secret.

He tipped her head back and kissed her, and poured his sadness and his fear and his love into that kiss. She opened her mouth against his and they moved together as one in the evening stillness - first with mouths alone and then with hands, seeking and finding familiar paths, tugging clothing aside. She sucked his fingers into her mouth and he slipped them up inside her but that wasn’t enough for her - they moved to their sides and he fit himself to her back and fit himself inside her, slowly, heavy with aching and longing. He made love to her like that, one hand between her legs and the other gentle on her throat so he could feel her pulse rush as she came silently, tight around him, wet and warm and satisfied. He tried to go quicker, to find his own end, but he couldn’t at that angle, he kept slipping out - so she dropped her hand between them and took hold of him and he thrust between her thighs and her fingers until at last his whole body went rigid with pleasure and he spilled himself all over her.

He was dizzy with relief. He nuzzled against her hairline. Examined each tiny bead of sweat collecting there. Drank in the paralyzing beauty of a single moment, instead of thinking of eternity. 

They had not resolved anything, perhaps. But whatever came next, they were together.

**

Ellana drifted off to sleep for a little while in Solas’s arms, after that. Well - perhaps not sleep, but to a quiet rest. It was light enough that when she heard Caralina’s voice in the other section of the tent, she woke instantly.

“One moment.”

She gave herself another quick scrub with the damp rag they’d left on top of their packs, and threw on her tunic and pants, not much caring to stand on ceremony at the moment. Caralina was still in her traveling gear - fine leather armor that didn’t make a sound as she moved. It was reminiscent of Ellana’s old prowler armor.

“There has been an incident,” Caralina said. “At another bordertown, further west this time. It’s called Avignon. There was a large and bloody fight between a group of elves and a group of humans. No mages this time - but according to reports, nearly every combatant on either side is dead. Emperor Villiers has put the alienage there on lockdown to root out supposed agents of Enasan in their ranks.”

Ellana felt a distant rage start to build in her, underneath her calm relaxation.

“Do we have agents there?”

“Not currently. I want to send someone to get to the bottom of this, but I fear how it would be twisted if they were caught.”

“Send a human agent, then, or one who is only elf-blooded. Preferably of Orlesian descent, or well-trained enough to pretend. If this is another incident that Villiers himself concocted, it could be enough to turn Divine Victoria against him. I want to know what’s really going on.”

“My thoughts exactly, tar’lan. I will send someone immediately. The town is close - they can reach it by midnight if they ride hard. Perhaps we will have word before tomorrow’s meeting is over.”

“Good. Thank you, Caralina.”

Caralina bowed and made her exit. Only then did Solas emerge from where he’d been sleeping, bare-chested and bare-footed but with his face set in a grim expression.

“There will be war.” His voice was flat. Certain. “Villiers will make sure of it. That is what this latest incident tells me.”

Ellana took a slow breath. “Let us give Cassandra one last chance to stop it. She can’t turn aside if it comes to light that he is behind the slaughter of innocent people - Orlesians and elves alike. That would make him no better than de Pelletier, and she would not stand for him on the throne.”

“And when it comes to the matter of the Veil?”

“We do our absolute best to turn focus away from that, and to present them as separate issues. They  _ are _ separate issues.”

Solas nodded. “Good. You have always had more of a head for this than you think you do, my heart.”

“Even someone as thick-headed as me has to learn at some point,” she said, doing her best to smile. Then, sweeping him once over with her eyes: “You look good like that.”

He chuckled, low in his throat, straightening his posture. It had been good to reconnect. She hadn’t realized how much she needed it until it happened. How far she’d let herself drift from him in her frustration that they could not agree. They both wanted the same things at the end of the day. Health, happiness, peace, and justice. For their family and for their people.

But how would they get those things in a world bent on denying them?

The council shared her feelings on the matter of the new incident when they met that night. It was agreed that they would all attend the meeting the following day in Clermont, but that Ellana would speak for all of them as much as possible. They needed to present one united voice. One united front.

Ashara ate her dinner, which was good. There was a hardness in her eyes, which wasn’t. Ellana wrapped her up in a hug and that softened her for a moment, which was also good.

“You don’t have to come tomorrow, da’asha,” she reminded her quietly.

“No,” Ashara said. “I do. I want them to look me in the eye when they explain themselves. When they say they still want to go to war with us.”

Ellana dreamed that night of Haven, and Redcliffe, and Adamant, and the Arbor Wilds, and all the other battlefields she’d known. Each time, Solas twisted them aside, and each time, they returned, until at last Ellana resigned herself to lying awake, wondering what battlefields were to come.

*

Clermont was not what Ellana had expected. It was tiny. Peaceful. Beautiful. And yet she could not even think its name without a tension in her chest that made her feel like she was choking. She kept glancing at Ashara as they approached the town, longing to ask her a new question with every foot of ground they covered.  _ Was it here? Was it here? Was it here that they sucked the joy right out of your heart? _

The Orlesians had their own pavilion set up for the meeting, although Ellana didn’t recognize it as such at first, because it did not have the Valmont purple and gold that she had known for more than two decades. Instead it was crimson and silver. At least the Chantry’s sunburst pattern was recognizable, as was Cassandra in her ghastly robes. As was Vivienne in her horned headdress.

Ellana steeled herself at the sight of them. Peace, happiness, and justice. She could have them. She would have them. She readjusted the broach that held her cloak in place over her long brocade overcoat. It had the three trees of Enasan - symbols of the three Elvhen homelands, and a reference to the Dalish idea of Vir Tanadahl. In that moment she thought of them as representatives of those three words as well. Peace, happiness, and justice.

“We are here today to find a peaceful resolution to the tension between two countries that I, Divine Victoria, hold in high esteem,” Cassandra began when they were all seated at the grand oak table inside her pavilion. “I see before me the representatives of these countries. I trust that all have come in good faith, and with good intentions in their hearts, and a desire to see these tensions resolved that equals my own.”

“Agreed,” Ellana said, her eyes flicking from face to face. Villiers, several members of the Council of Heralds, and Vivienne, all sitting on one side. Herself, Solas, Ashara, and Enasan’s ruling council on the other. Cassandra at the head of the table.

“Naturally,” Villiers said smoothly.

“As I understand it, there are two chief complaints between Orlais and Enasan - the first being the incident that occurred here in Clermont, and the second being accusations of tampering with the very Veil itself. The Chantry has done extensive research into the first incident, and is here to request that we be permitted to make the same research into the second.”

Who  _ was _ the woman before her? Ellana recognized every line and scar on Cassandra’s face but not the words. They were so political. So rehearsed. So detached. Ellana wanted to take her aside, away from the pomp and circumstance, out into the woods somewhere, so they could talk as friends.  _ We want the same things, lethallan. _ She very nearly said it out loud.

“Then let us begin with the incident in Clermont,” Ellana said instead. “Enasan holds to its position that it was a deliberate act of aggression and terror on the part of the Orlesian nobility. We have the testimony of my own daughter, one of only two survivors of that horrific day, and our own research into the matter to prove it. Research, I might add, that the new Emperor of Orlais himself helped us compile.”

Villiers smiled a thin-lipped smile.

“Indeed. And yet I offered you my aid before I discovered the foul contamination of the Veil, committed by your nation and very likely by your own husband. And it was before this second incident in Avignon, which has taken the lives of twenty innocent Orlesians.”

Ellana thought back to Caralina’s note, delivered at dawn, that her Orlesian elf-blooded agent was in place, investigating what really happened, along with an elven agent who’d grown up in Orlais. The most damning evidence so far was that nearly every witness to the fight was dead, on either side. Things rarely worked out so neatly without being planned.

Cassandra raised a hand. Ellana spared a glance for Ashara, who looked tense, ready to leap out of her seat and say something. She was grateful that Solas sat beside their daughter, no doubt doing his best to calm her with his aura.

“The Chantry agrees that there is sufficient evidence to prove that Comte de Pelletier orchestrated the attack in Clermont, and that your daughter and her companions were in no way at fault. This is why I demanded that the Council of Heralds withdraw any and all support from de Pelletier, and why I have recommended that Emperor Etienne strip him of all lands and titles.”

Ashara did make a noise at that - a sort of strangled sound. She gave Ellana a pleading look.

“May my daughter speak?”

“Please.”

There were murmurs among the Orlesians at that, but Ellana didn’t care. Ashara looked directly at Villiers when she spoke.

“And what will become of those lands and titles? His wealth? Will they go to some other human noble?”

Villiers stiffened. “Yes.”

Ashara shook her head. “No. The other survivor of the attack - Sylvio Agosti - is a young child. He deserves something for the loss of his parents. For what he suffered. I demand that some of the profit go to him.”

Villiers laughed. “I wasn’t aware that you were in the position to make demands.”

Ellana tensed, expecting an angry outburst from Ashara - but instead her daughter’s face crumpled. Of course. Of course she would hear that and it would feed into this notion that had taken root in her heart - that she was useless, worthless, meaningless.

“I do believe that that is only fair,” Ilriane Tabris spoke up. “De Pelletier committed a grievous crime against the nation of Enasan. It would be a just act for you, as a newly crowned emperor, to see that the nation of Enasan also benefits from his punishment. Even if it is only to the benefit of one child.”

If Ashara was heartened by Ilriane’s support, her face didn’t show it. Villiers leaned back in his chair.

“Your point is well made, Ambassador Tabris. I can agree to such terms - but only after the matter of the Veil is settled. It would do the little survivor no good to receive coin if his country is in ruins.”

Ellana could feel the wave of stiffness that passed through the elven half of the table at those words. They were a clear threat. All of them knew that. All of them had ruins in their past - Elvhen ones, smoking aravels, decimated alienages, manacles and slave ships - even Ashara, who they’d so carefully raised in peace and safety, had ruins in her blood now. The ruins of her friends, dying in the very field that waved peacefully at their backs.

Ellana knew then. She knew she would not deactivate Solas’s magic or destroy the orb they’d found. This was always how such realizations happened for her, for better or for worse. They weren’t even words at first. Just feelings as solid as stone. How would these people tremble if they knew that their former Inquisitor saved Thedas through feelings she couldn’t articulate, that came from logic so buried in her blood that it had no form or words?

None of that mattered. She knew now, sitting in that pavilion in the town where her daughter had nearly died. Her people had enough ruins in their past. Two of the three trees on her broach represented those ruins - Elvhenan, and the Dales. Enasan would not be another ruin. Not while she drew breath.

“Well then,” Ellana said. “What is the Chantry’s proposed investigation into our Veil?”

Vivienne, silent up to this point, was the one who answered. “We will lead a team of Chantry-trained, handpicked mages and templars on an extensive tour of your country to take various readings and measurements. I would be in charge of this.”

“I would insist that Enasan be allowed to select a team of mages to accompany them. Arlanal would oversee that process, and ideally travel alongside your team. There is nothing to be found, of course. But I want to be sure that no one will start telling stories. I want to be sure that Enasan’s innocence is faithfully represented.” The lie was smooth this time. Ellana had no idea how she would follow up on those words - how she would allow them near unfettered access to Enasan, not reverse Solas’s work entirely, and still keep it a secret - but she would.

An aide appeared on their side of the pavilion, carrying a tray of drinks, and placing one before each of the elven delegates. Ellana noticed at once that her silver goblet had a small piece of parchment sticking out from underneath its base. Her heart sped. She would need to find an opportune moment to discreetly retrieve it. At that moment, the aide stumbled, and dropped the tray with a great crash, and all eyes went to him. Ellana slipped the parchment into her palm and used her thumb to open it. It was tiny, and contained only five words:

 

_ Villiers ordered attack. Proof incoming. _

 

Ellana let out a breath through her nose, trying to ensure her face remained neutral as she slid the note into the pocket of her overcoat. Caralina’s agents ensured she got this immediately. Before any real decisions were made, she needed to find out what their proof was.

“Let us discuss the terms of this arrangement then,” Ellana said. “I will cede to Arlanal at this time, since she is our arcane expert.”

One of the members of the Council of Heralds sneered openly at the sight of the former Keeper, saying in Orlesian to the woman at her right:

“Ah, yes. Another rabbit.”

Ellana lost the rest, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t. She just needed to breathe and count the moments until she could meet with the agent who had news of Villiers’ guilt.

They spent thirty minutes discussing the minutiae of the Chantry-sanctioned investigation - exactly how many people, the exact route, the methods, the length of their stay - before it was agreed that it was time for a recess. Ashara was the first up from her seat. She walked away from the pavilion, towards the field, and simply stood there amongst the waving grass. Ellana was careful to leave with more poise and dignity, but she still went to her daughter’s side as quickly as she could.

“We should go back to our tent and eat something,” she said, touching Ashara’s elbow. Ashara gave a barely imperceptible shake of her head.

“Not yet. I want - I need - to stay here a while.”

This was where it happened.

The realization poured like ice down her spine. Ellana wanted to stand with her as long as she needed, but she also desperately wanted to know what news came from the agent in Avignon. She could not have both. Solas approached and stood with each of them.

“The Veil is thin here,” he said softly. “The spirits look on what happened with great sadness and great interest.”

Ellana shot him an angry look. Of course Ashara knew the Veil was thin there. She spilt her own blood to make it so. But then Solas went on.

“That means that you and your friends will not be forgotten, da’vhenan. Their names - their fate - what you did to save them - none of it will be forgotten. The fact that you returned here shows so much bravery. The fact that you spoke on Sylvio’s behalf shows the same. Surely the spirits will remember that as well.”

Ashara did not react to his words. “I just want to stay here a while. Please.”

Solas nodded. “Very well.”

But as she walked away from her, he let out a long, worried sigh. Ellana took his hand, and they walked back like that to the circle of tents that marked their temporary home. The agents were waiting in the council’s pavilion. They were older than Ellana expected. A middle-aged pair of men, one elven and one human, and both appeared haggard and travel-worn.

“What is your news?” Ellana asked at once.

“Villiers ordered the attack in Avignon. We found official letters promising the town’s militia gold if they went into the alienage and killed any and all suspected agents of Enasan.”

“And we found notices in the alienage stirring up dissent in the elves - encouraging them to go to the town square to demand better rights and protections of their magistrate when he would be present there. The notices were printed, and yet the one printshop in town does not serve elves, and none of the surviving elves knows who posted them.”

As the men spoke in turn, their voices heavily accented with Orlesian, they produced copies of the letters and posters. The members of the council passed them amongst themselves, studying them in turn.

“But there is no concrete proof that this came from the emperor,” Ilriane said. The two men exchanged a look. 

“We are aware. But we were able to acquire this from an urchin we found digging through the bodies.”

He produced a chevalier’s blade from beneath his muddied cloak.

“And these,” the elven man added, placing several yellow feathers on the table. “These were found just outside the town, as if they had been hastily discarded there.”

“So the story would appear to be that Villiers ensured that the elves and the humans would fight, but he also wanted to ensure that it would appear to be the elves’ fault. And your proof is that the letters and poster did not come from the alienage, and chevaliers appear to have been on the scene,” Abelas said. “Likely to ensure that everyone in that fight died.”

“Yes.”

“It’s not enough to demand that Divine Victoria sanction Villiers or insist on removing him from power,” Ellana said slowly. “But it could be enough to delay their investigation, if we insist that this is more pressing.”

“Any delay would be worth it, my lady,” the human said. “There was more afoot there. Elves were missing from the alienage, even though it has been locked down and under heavy guard since the incident. Édouard here did manage to sneak inside, and he says that those missing are not the sort to run away or cause trouble.”

“Good. I’ll need you to brief the new agents we send in. If we send you back, it may cause too much suspicion,” Caralina said.

Ellana let her mind drift while they prepared for lunch. She thought of the Orlesians and their sneering. She thought of yet another alienage on lockdown, more elves dead, more missing. She thought of Ashara, still standing in that field, trying to make sense of what happened. Those feelings bubbled higher and higher in her until she almost couldn’t breathe.  _ Even if we manage this deception - if they don’t catch us now - when will this end? If Villiers will go to such lengths to make us look weak and evil… _

This would not end well.

She could barely swallow her food. Solas rested a hand on her thigh in concern, but she did not voice the words. Not until they were back in the pavilion and Villiers was already there, standing - a sword at his hip, and chevaliers at his back.

“You should not enter these talks in this state,” Cassandra insisted angrily from her place at his side. “I demand that you put your sword away and send these chevaliers -”

“Perhaps, Divine Victoria, you should tell your dear friend Lavellan what she should and should not do, rather than the Emperor of Orlais,” he said, noticing their entrance into the pavilion. Airy as it was, she could still feel the tension in it rising like thick smoke.

“What is the meaning of this?” Ellana asked at once. “Why are you armed?”

“Because we are at war,” he said with a smile. “Because we have learned that the incident in Avignon was provoked by agents of Enasan seeking to terrorize innocent Orlesians, elves and humans alike, and to sow chaos so early in my new reign. I know what we will find if we search your country as planned. You have made it clear that you wish for the destruction of -”

“Shut up.” Ellana’s words came at some distance from her body. The chevaliers bristled - all creaking metal. Someone behind her gasped. It wasn’t shocking to her. She always knew, didn’t she, that this was where it would end. “If we have arrived at this point, it is only because  _ your _ country wishes it. Divine Victoria, if you wish to speak with our delegation further, you may. We have our own information regarding Avignon. But I think we are done dealing with the Empire of Orlais.”

She avoided looking at Cassandra, keeping her eyes locked on the emperor. Villiers still stood straight, but his mouth twisted in a way that suggested unease. Good. This wasn’t what he expected. He wanted them to fall on their knees - onto his sword. He’d expected their automatic deference because of the shape of their ears. Good. Good. This was right. This was just. If he wanted war, he would have it, and they would win, and every nation in Thedas would know that the elves of Enasan could defend themselves against any threat.

Ellana turned and left the pavilion, crossing one last time through the field where her daughter still stood. Ashara caught sight of her, and Ellana’s face must have betrayed what happened, because Ashara approached her at once.

“It didn’t end well?”

“No. It did not.”

“So there will be war?”

“Yes.”

A breeze rushed through the grass and leaves around them, and Ellana was aware that the rest of the council was following, but none of that mattered. She felt clear as the sky. It was all decided now. Ashara was silent for a while. Then she spoke one quiet, firm word:

“Good.”

It was the first moment that Ellana doubted what she’d done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ....listen, Solas and Ashara can't be the only ones in this family who make terrible decisions. Ellana wants in on some of that action.
> 
> Prompts, suggestions, comments and general discussion more than welcome here or on my [Tumblr](https://buttsonthebeach.tumblr.com/)! Thank you for reading.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One small warning: this chapter features Ashara struggling with depression in ways that are based off of my own experiences. Practice that self-care and read with that in mind :)

The truth Ashara didn’t want to speak in the weeks following her dismissal from the academy was that she hadn’t even tried.

She lay there in her childhood bed surrounded by her childhood walls and her childhood memories and thought about it, over and over again. How they’d taken them down to the cells. How she’d known already that she would fail. How she had connected with the Fade once, felt the cold touch of Despair - and then given up. Spent hours lying on the cold floor, staring at the ceiling, feeling nothing. Some distant part of her mind screamed at her to try, try, at least  _ try _ , at least  _ stand up _ , but she knew that part of her mind didn’t matter, she knew it was wrong. So she just didn’t move, until Eshne finally came for her and saw that she had failed.

Her mother and father circled her like anxious birds, thinking she’d experienced some trauma in the Fade, when she hadn’t even tried.

The truth was that she didn’t want a draught to prevent her from connecting to the Fade so she could avoid some trauma (that was all in her waking hours, in every person who reminded her of Velriel and Gwynne and Tamaris and Livia and Vito), but because she feared it would be as empty as she felt. If the Fade responded to her feelings, and her intent, and she had neither - was as empty as an old bleached seashell - what would she find there? She didn’t want to know.

When she woke one night to see someone crouched on the dresser in her room, and her heart raced in sudden terror, it was the first real feeling she’d had in days. It only took a moment for the silhouette - the wide, floppy shape of his hat - to register, but her heart was still pounding, and strangely she enjoyed it. It was good to feel  _ something _ , even if that something was fear.

“Cole,” she said softly in acknowledgement. “You’re really here.”

“Aren’t I always?” he replied in a musing tone.

“I mean - this isn’t the Fade. I know it’s not.” She knew it wasn’t because of the crushing weight in her chest, the emptiness so real it stole her breath away. The terror had faded. She was back where she started.

“It is not the Fade,” Cole conceded. “I got tired of waiting.”

Ashara knew that many people found spirits - and Cole in particular - difficult to understand, because of their lapses, their leaps in logic, their strange association. Ashara never had, partially because of the many spirits her father introduced her to, partially because that was how the Elvhen language worked as well. She liked it, actually. She liked that Cole implied and didn’t declare. He had been waiting in the Fade for her, and when she did not make an appearance, he chose to cross the Veil.

Another person she’d failed.

Ashara sat up and drew her knees to her chest.

“I am sorry that I made you wait.”

“Why?”

“It’s rude.”

Cole unfolded himself from his crouching position, landing soundlessly on the floor. He was tall and thin as ever. Ashara tried to remember the last time she saw him in the waking world. Maybe when she was seventeen or so, and the true extent of Mamae’s illness was becoming apparent? She saw him - or sensed him - in the Fade, but he was not always in this shape. She liked it when he appeared like this. In this form, he matched all the stories Mamae and Papae told. The boy who was not quite human, not quite a spirit, the one they both felt intensely protective of, even in the moments when he emerged from a fight with his daggers dripping in blood. Perhaps especially then. The one who never stopped believing in their love, even when they nearly did.

“I would not have waited if I did not want to,” he said simply, and approached the bed. 

Ashara pulled further into herself, partially to make room for him, and partially to protect herself from what she knew was coming. A gentleness she didn’t deserve. A push to open up, to name the truths she did not want to speak. He sat at the other end of the bed, cross-legged, and looked at her, his face neutral. She looked away. A moment later, she felt the gentle touch of his magic in her mind. She tensed at first, and then she relaxed into it. Let him see. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

“You think it’s nothing - think you are lost, meaningless, drifting. That you are nothing, empty as an old can of paint. It isn’t true, you know.” He sounded - surprised, almost. Like this wasn’t what he expected to find. 

_ I’m sorry _ , she thought at once.  _ I’m sorry I’m not what you expected. I’m not what I expected. Nothing is what I expected. _

“You have nothing to be sorry for.” How did he sound so sure?

“I have a lot to be sorry for,” she said quietly. She began to repeat their names again, as she did so often now - Gwynne, Livia -

“Blood, searing, breathless - I’m trying, I’m trying, I have to try - you tried to stop the bad people. You did. It was not your fault that you could not.”

Her chest was heavy again. Heavy with the weight of that memory. She did not want his gentleness. She did not want to forgive herself. She wanted to coil tight around this hurt because if she was suffering it was okay that she was alive, that she survived and they didn’t - she could survive as long as she paid for it.

“Life is freely given. It is not something you pay for.”

Anger surged in her then. How old was Cole? How many horrors had he seen? Why was he still so naive? And yet she could not think of a way to disprove him. Her mind was slow and foggy and her chest  _ hurt _ and she just wanted to go back to sleep and sleep with no dreams forever.

“Maybe I can come another night,” Cole said. “Thoughts are hard. They need time to settle in, don’t they?”

“You’re always welcome, Cole.”

“That’s good. I like being welcome.”

There was a soft hiss, like a sudden gust of wind, but the room remained still - and he was gone. Ashara sat up in bed a little while longer. Was it actually possible to be too tired to lay down, or was she truly that lazy? The next thing she knew she was awake again, and morning light was shining through her window, and she found herself at the start of another day.

*

Cole did not come back the next night. Ashara didn’t mind that. She woke, dazed her way through another day, and then slept dreamlessly. Again, and again, and again.

It occurred to her that she had never simply - existed before. When she was young she was constantly moving, studying, exploring - then she was sixteen and her mother was sick, and she had exams to pass, and her entire being was focused on both of those pursuits. And that didn’t really change until she was twenty - and then she was working for Vir’anor, crisscrossing Thedas every day of the year, and she was in the Fade with Lucius every night -

Lucius.

Maybe her father was right - maybe she could speak to him. But what was there to say?

_ I’m a failure. You were right to leave me. You deserve your beautiful, rich, talented lover. All this potential - all this privilege you saw in me - look where it has led. I am alive, and I am miserable, and better people than me are dead. _

Because they were all better than her. Livia worked so hard for a better life for her son. Vito had loved them both as if Sylvio was his own child. Gwynne supported her whole family. Velriel was a venerated member of his clan and his family, who would never meet some of his grandchildren. Tamaris hadn’t even gotten a chance to start living yet.

At least she’d saved Sylvio. At least she’d done that.

She’d saved her mother, too.

But hadn’t she only done that for herself? Because of the gaping, gnawing terror eating her alive at the thought of how much she would miss her?

_ You were right to leave me, Lucius. I am privileged, and selfish, and short-sighted, and I didn’t deserve what we had. _

Thoughts like that circled her mind all day. If this was simply existing, with no clear goal - she hated it. She wanted to be on the move again.

And yet her chest was still so heavy, her mind so slow, that she would spend half of her day drumming up the energy to go from one room to the next.

She was worrying her parents. She was worrying them at a time when they could ill afford to be worried. She added it to the mountain of guilt that sat on her back like an anvil.

How was she supposed to keep living like this?

Cole came to her the night she first thought that. He materialized with that strange pop and whisper that he always did, just after she crawled into bed. She wondered what it was like to cross the Veil physically. She didn’t have the energy to ask him.

“Have the thoughts had time to settle in?” he asked.

“Yes,” Ashara said, her voice bitter.  _ All the wrong ones have settled in _ . She felt the gentle brush of Cole’s mind against hers and opened to it. He sucked in a short breath at what he felt.

“But you are precious,” he said. “Bright, gleaming, full of promise - you are the thing your parents never even dared to dream of. The accident that changed everything.”

“Ah, yes. The accident.” She hadn’t thought of it that way. Her parents hadn’t even intended to have a child. She was the product of pure luck. Passion on a sunny afternoon, when her mother was changing the kind of contraceptive brew she used, and the day before a sudden summons to Skyhold that caused her to forget her contraception entirely. She was an accident, and yet she’d survived in Clermont where others hadn’t.

“No - no - let me try again.  _ So _ precious,  _ so _ bright,  _ so _ gleaming,  _ so _ full of promise - you are so much. So much that even your father who rewrote the world couldn’t imagine you at first.” He took two swift steps forward and captured both her hands in both of his. Ashara started at the sudden touch. “So much that even your mother who saw hope where no one else did couldn’t dare to hope for you.”

Her heart pounded. She could feel Cole’s eagerness, his earnestness - and deep in her own body she could feel the truth of his words. How much her parents loved her. How much she was wanted in this world. But that truth frightened her, suddenly, made her breath come quick and fast, made words she had not intended to say spill out of her mouth.

“But, Cole - so were  _ they _ . Every last one of them - they - my friends -”

They were all precious. And bright. And gleaming. And full of promise, too.

But she couldn’t make that part come out.

Instead she cried wracking, heaving sobs that felt as if they broke her chest in two.

Cole was physically awkward at so many moments - when trying to stand casually, or to gauge how much distance he should leave between himself and someone he was speaking to, or when trying to maintain eye contact - but in this he was not awkward. He made space for himself beside her, and held her close. He said nothing. He simply let her grieve. 

It was what she was doing, she realized as the tears ended. Grieving. She never had to grieve before. She never had to simply sit still, and feel something this awful and this immense. This was the gaping hole she’d run from when her mother was sick. Maybe she’d run from it even before.

_ I have been too lucky in my life. It isn’t fair. I shouldn’t be so lucky. I shouldn’t, _

“It is not your fault,” Cole said again. “It is not your fault.”

Ashara had the feeling that he could say it a hundred thousand times, and she would not believe him.

*

But it did start to work, a week or so after that meeting. She said it to herself over and over. Maybe it was the hundred thousandth repetition that did it. Maybe it was just time.

She still didn’t want to do anything, or go anywhere, or be conscious in the Fade, or have to think or focus longer than she absolutely had to. But some of that pressure began to ease. She had done all she could in Clermont. She had.

But there was still her failure with Dirth’ena Enasalin to consider. Why, why, why hadn’t she just tried a little harder? Why did she have to be so stupid, so emotional, so lazy? And there were the terse words exchanged between her parents - her mother’s frequent meetings with the council - they tried to prevent her from knowing or worrying too much - but she knew. The chances of war grew larger each day. It would be a war she would not fight in. Yes, Eshne told her that she was welcome to return and try again, that she could still enter the army through a different mage’s academy if she didn’t want to try again, but all of that felt impossible. She had not left the house in a fortnight. She had not practiced with her staff. She ate too much or not at all. The lean lines of muscle she’d built during her training were fading.

But Cole was right. She was precious, and wanted, and it wasn’t her fault she survived. She had tried her best. She had to go on living.

So one night, she did not take one of the draughts her father had prepared for her before leaving on one of his mysterious trips. She laid down, struggled to sleep (despite having been tired all day), and then finally drifted off and woke in the Fade.

Cole was not there. That led to an initial flurry of fear in her chest. They’d made no arrangements but she’d assumed he was watching over her and only physically manifesting when she seemed to particularly need his help. Where was he? Was she alone here? The Fade was dark, the sky above her roiling with black clouds, and it was all too loud, too many clamouring emotions, and the air was thick and hot like before a summer storm and she couldn’t breathe -

Ashara woke gasping, and did not try to enter the Fade again for three more days. Three more days in which she hardly left her room, in which her mother sat by her bedside when she had the time and stroked her hair and called her  _ da’vhenan _ and  _ emma da’len _ and said that she wished there was something she could do to help.

Then her father returned from his trip, and she heard through the raised voices of her parents that the Orlesian civil war was over, and that Emperor Etienne Villiers demanded her mother’s presence in Clermont. Her heart beat faster just at the name, though she remained sitting in her bed. That name had been her heartbeat for weeks now, she realized. That tiny town she’d never heard of before it consumed her. It lived in her blood.

She had to go back.

She was so fixated on that thought that she forgot to take her draught, and woke up in the Fade.

She was in Elvhenan - that she knew at once, because even in memory, it hummed with more magic than she ever thought possible. It helped that she was also in a gold and crystal castle, floating amongst white clouds, with a green rolling country far below her. She knew at once that it was one of Falon’Din’s memories. This happened from time to time. He was gone - they knew that much - but he’d left scars in her mind, and pieces of himself behind. This was just one of them. A place he’d been to - the names Ghilan’nain and Andruil drifted into her mind as she tried to determine where. Ah. One of their palaces.

She was surprised, again, that Cole was not there. She wanted to cast her senses out for him but she also wanted to shrink inside herself, to stuff her fingers in her ears and ignore the many searching songs of the Fade. People and memories were calling to her - songs of triumph and sadness - songs with no words and songs that shouted obscenities - she knew how to filter it but she felt paralyzed with fear, overwhelmed by doubt -

So she thought back to that day with Falon’Din. She thought back to how she had pulled herself from his grasp over and over again. She grounded herself in her real-not-real body - imagined how cool the crystal floor would be against her feet, how soft the silk gown she would be wearing would feel against her skin, the tickle of her curls swaying against her neck and back. And she repeated to herself, over and over again, the most elemental truth she knew.

_ I am Ashara Lavellan. I am me. I am me. I am safe. _

She breathed more easily. The songs receded, becoming manageable. She picked through them. Many memories - some of them hers, some of them her parents’ - and three distinct calls. Two she recognized immediately. Lucius and Claudia. How her real-not-real heart leapt at that familiarity of their voices in the Fade.  _ Ash. Ash. Ash. _ The third she could not quite recognize, and that frightened her. The last time she followed an unknown call in the Fade, it led her to Falon’Din. She pushed that one away - and then hesitated, turning her attention from the drifting castle north to the call of her friends. Should she answer?

It was then that she felt the distinct, nearly overwhelming presence of her father enter the Fade. She would speak to him first. It was easy as breathing to bring him to her side, although he appeared startled when he first arrived. He realized quickly enough what had happened, his aura settling as he did. She wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly feeling vulnerable in that airy place, with her father’s eyes fixed so intently on her.

“I want to come with you to Clermont,” she said at once.

He looked surprised to hear that, too. “And why is that?”

“I want to be there. To stand there. To just - see. To understand. And if they’ll let me, I want Villiers to look me in the eye when he says he had nothing to do with what happened there.”

The words tumbled from her mouth but she felt the truth of them. The dream grew more real and solid in response. There were exotic plants in the corners of this atrium now, the whisper of voices from other parts of the palace, of music. She felt more solid. This was the solution. She would go to Clermont.

But, of course, her father’s eyes were full of worry, and the Fade around him was soft and cool with it.

“I do not know that such a trip will bring you peace,” he said.

_ Of course it won’t _ , she thought at once.  _ Nothing will bring me peace. _

They talked a little while longer. He tried to reassure her, to tell her she was not useless. She couldn’t believe him, because she hadn’t even told him that the only reason she was there that night was because she forgot to take the draught. It wasn’t bravery that brought her here. She wasn’t healing (was she?). But he had so much to worry about, without worrying about her.

She couldn’t stop him, though. She felt the spike in his fear when she stepped towards the edge of the palace and looked straight down. She could not stop him from worrying. So she said good night, and followed the first thread of song she heard away from the palace in the sky - and found herself at Cole’s side, high on a bluff looking down at a river. The Emerald Graves, perhaps? Yes. Brown nugs hopped all around them.

“You’re here,” he said eagerly. One of the nugs was in his lap, chirping. “I knew you would come. The spirits have missed you. They sing your name.”

He was right. Several spirits that she knew - Curiosity, Knowledge, Joy - hovered near them, singing their excitement at her presence. She felt cowed by that excitement. She did not deserve it.

“But you do,” Cole said. “You do deserve it.”

Beyond their singing she could hear other voices, though - Rage, Despair, Grief - their voices like distant thunder.

“They were always there. You’re just looking for them now.”

Ashara let out a noise of frustration. “So, what - I should just stop looking for them?”

“Well - yes.” Cole gently nudged the nug off of his lap and onto the soft mossy ground. It trilled in something that sounded like annoyance, then sidled up to Ashara and nestled against her leg, closing its eyes. A spirit of Comfort, perhaps? She reached down and touched its warm, soft skin. She did feel a little comforted.

“I see. So I just stop looking for Rage and Despair and Grief and I’ll stop finding them. Stop feeling them. I don’t think that’s how the world works, Cole.”

Cole turned to her, urgently, and took her face in his hands. They were a little cold, even in the Fade.

“But that is a truth you have always known - real, solid, like a stone in your palm, like the weight of someone’s arm on your shoulders.  _ You _ shape the Fade.  _ You _ shape your thoughts. It works in waking as well as in sleeping.”

Ashara was intimidated by the intensity of his gaze, his pale, pale eyes. She wanted to look away, to argue.  _ It can’t be that easy. It can’t. _

“So are you saying that I should just… stop being sad? And think - what, instead?”

“I like to think about rabbits.” Cole said it as if it was the most solemn truth he had to offer. “Or nugs.”

Ashara looked around the idyllic grove. She breathed in the smell of the ancient forest, focused on the river flowing over the rocks beneath them. She thought about rabbits, and about nugs. It wasn’t easy. Her mind kept straying to other things - the odd angle of Gwynne’s neck, the disappointment in Eshne’s eyes when she saw Ashara had failed the last test, the anger and fear in her parents’ voices as they discussed Orlais - but bit by bit she kept reigning it in. Just rabbits. Just nugs. Just Comfort. Just safety.

She breathed a little easier than before.

“Do you see?” Cole squeezed her hands.

Ashara squeezed his hands back. “A little, I think.”

“That’s good. Sometimes I am not very clear. And I don’t like it when you are sad. I don’t like it when anyone is sad.”

“I agree,” she said, her mind drifting from the nugs and the river and the lowing of some far-off ram and back to the people she’d lost. To Sylvio’s frightened eyes.

“I think you would be Compassion. Back then. When there wasn’t so much difference between us and elves. When we were a bit like rabbits and nugs.”

Compassion. What if that was what she was, instead of Useless, instead of Broken, instead of all the other words she hurled at herself now? Ashara felt her throat begin to close, felt tears threatening behind her eyes. Compassion. That would be a good thing to be.

“Compassion hurts,” she managed, ducking her head, trying to hide the tears from Cole, as if that would help, as if she had not already cried in front of him before.

“It does,” he said. “Why do you think I was here?”

That had never occurred to her. That even Cole - the embodiment of Compassion - felt overwhelmed by his own nature. That maybe it was okay if she was overwhelmed by her own. That was when the tears began in earnest, escaped from her in long sobs that Cole quieted against his shoulder as they embraced, just as they had before.

“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s okay that it hurts. It’s okay that it hurts to care so much.”

She sobbed in his arms until she could start to believe it was true.

*

It did not work overnight, this focusing on the good, on willing her inner reality to change the way she willed the Fade to change. But Ashara could feel it begin to work.

And then they arrived in Clermont.

And then it all rushed back into her like a rising tide.

The woods where she had bled and run and hid and looked over her shoulder expecting death to come for her and Sylvio both. Where demons had whispered nonstop pleas in her ears.

She was surrounded by politicians, all of them debating Enasan’s future. All of them debating events she had carved into her skin in the form of scars.

Cole said it wouldn’t be easy.

So she withdrew - did not speak much even to her parents, was glad she had a tent all to herself - but she also grit her teeth. She tried her hardest. If rabbits and nugs worked for Cole there had to be something that would work for her. So as the weight of everything happening - everything that happened - pressed down on her, she imagined that the pressure in her chest was a glowing golden ball instead. One she was guarding, and nurturing, and allowing to grow. It was hard to talk, hard to think, hard to move, hard to feel - but she was going to curl in around that golden ball, instead of around emptiness.

That night Cole came to her again, this time in her own dream, a reflection of Clermont itself. She was willing herself to simply exist in the space, without remembering, without listening to the howlings of the demons that lurked outside the bubble she created with her mind. She was holding the golden ball she’d envisioned in her mind in her hands now. Trying to focus only on that.

“Angry, frightened, brimming with every kind of loss - innocence, life, faith, hope - this is a hard place to be,” Cole said solemnly. He crouched beside her, and ran a finger through the loose soil, as if he could stir up something that would help make sense of what happened here.

“Yes,” Ashara said. The gold ball in her hands dimmed. The voices roared louder.  _ It wasn’t enough, what you did here. The humans deserve a tide of blood that will wipe them from the face of Thedas, the way they have tried over and over again to wipe your people out of existence - _

She had to squeeze her eyes shut then, and focus only on Cole at her side, and on willing the voices away.

“How can I be Compassion when I think such things, Cole?” she said, knowing he would have heard them. “Demons only say things that they think will persuade us. So somehow - on some level - I must believe it.”

Cole was silent so long that Ashara opened her eyes to make sure he was still with her. The ethereal version of Clermont had wavered in her lack of focus. She could glimpse bodies in the grass, flickering in and out of existence as she tried to tighten her control. They weren’t the bodies of her friends, she realized. They were the bodies of the men and women she killed in a maelstrom of fire summoned from within her own blood. Cole was standing now, but his eyes were still trained on the dirt.

“The first thing I did was pick up a pair of daggers.”

“In the White Spire, you mean?”

“Yes.” Cole toed at the earth, erasing whatever it was he had drawn while he crouched down. “Even Compassion has a limit.”

So that was okay, too.

She could still be good - still be Compassion - even if she had the blood of those men and women on her hands. She did what she had to. She was not a monster.

The bodies flickered out of existence once again. She cupped her hands and summoned the glowing ball of light.

“It’s very pretty,” Cole said. “You should show your parents.”

Ashara could feel them in the Fade nearby - Mamae dreaming of endless battlefields from her past, and of battlefields that might come, and Papae trying his best to push those dreams away. No. She still couldn’t go to them. Not yet. She had to figure this out on her own. To prove that she was not a child, and to spare them the burden.

“Or you could show it to your friends. Can’t you hear them calling? Across distance and space - you fear that you are different, that the bonds are weakened, but they love you.”

Claudia and Lucius.  _ They love you _ . Her heart seemed to twist and grow small.

“I am different,” she said.

“I know,” Cole replied. “But I still love you. Your parents still love you. They will, too.”

She thought to ask Cole about the different kinds of love that people felt, if he meant that Claudia and Lucius felt the same way about her - but she pushed that thought aside. She had enough to deal with, to understand. Perhaps that was why she had not gone to them - or at least why she had not gone to Lucius. She remembered so vividly their ethereal walk in Minrathous, the way he’d drawn close to her, the deep brown of his eyes as he warned her that she might not find what she sought in Dirth’ena Enasalin. She remembered the way those brown eyes twisted things up inside her. She wished her feelings for him could be simple. She wished everything could be simple.

“Perhaps you should go see my parents,” she said. “They could use your help, too.”

“Not as much as you,” he said simply. “Not as much as some others. Whenever they see me, they want to help  _ me _ . I think they thought I was their child, before you were ever born. A little thing, scared and confused. I go to them when I need help.”

Ashara had to laugh quietly at that. “That does sound like them.”

The golden ball glowed warm in her hands. Solid and real as the truths she was trying to feel. She was good. She was safe. She could rebuild from here. She could make things simpler with time.

*

Everything about the meeting in Clermont was simple - and nothing about it was.

Of course the Orlesians still acted like they were the victims. Of course she had to demand that Sylvio receive some sort of compensation for what he lost. Of course her whole body went cold passing through that field, even though she had recreated it in her dreams, hoping to dull the pain. Of course she stood there, rooted, ignoring the great political movements around her because of her own private grief. The field seemed so much smaller than she remembered. She could have Fade-stepped - could have blocked - could have - could have -

She was going to relive this over and over and over again until she died. The comfort Cole offered was the same comfort you offered to any dying animal - a lie.

Which was why she was happy when her mother said there would be war. Why the only word she could think of in that moment was  _ good _ .  _ Good _ .  _ Let us fight them. There was never any other option. Sometimes Compassion is a knife in the dark. _

And it was thoughts like that that haunted her all the way until she went to sleep, until she woke in the Fade to find its air thick and nearly impossible to breathe, to find that she was choking on her own rage.  _ This is not who I am. It isn’t. It isn’t. _

Which was why she finally answered the tug of Lucius’s consciousness on her own.

_ Please,  _ she thought, collapsing the distance between them, clawing her way through it.  _ Please remember me the way I was. Please remind me. _

He was dreaming of the printshop his parents owned in Vyrantium, before the elven riots. The printshop where he’d killed the elf who killed his little brother. But it was peaceful, now. He was fiddling with the parts of a printing press, laying them out one at a time on a nearby table, so intent on his work that he did not seem to notice her presence. He had glasses on. Had he started wearing glasses in waking, too?

“Lucius?” she said, her voice just above a whisper.

“One moment,” he said, in that absent voice she knew from when they’d curl up on the battered couch in his flat and read together, his hand on her leg, or her shoulder.

“Lucius,” she said again, more loudly.

He looked up, and saw her, and face opened up and softened all at once, and she opened up and softened too, just looking at him.

_ I love him _ .

The words were in the present tense, and she felt them in every part of her spirit.

“Ash,” he said, taking off the glasses. “Are you alright?” There was something hesitant in his movements and in his words.

_ I love him. _

“No,” she said.

He stood, but that movement was slow and hesitant too. He didn’t come out from around the table.

“I’m a good person, right?” she asked. She could feel every one of her veins, thrumming with his nearness, the familiarity of his spirit, his aura. “I’m good, aren’t I?”

“Of course you are,” he said it quietly, and without a moment’s hesitation.

_ I love him _ .

“I didn’t even tell you what’s wrong,” she said. “I didn’t even tell you why I asked.”

“It doesn’t matter.” He was oddly still. Why didn’t he come out from behind the table, come closer to her? “I will never doubt the answer to that question. You are a good person, Ashara Lavellan.” Another hesitation. “And I did hear what happened with the arcane warrior training. I’ve - we’ve - been worried about you.”

We’ve. He and Claudia.

Or he and Rhea?

It was an absurd guess, but Rhea’s name was still ice water down her spine. Of course he hesitated to come to her. She appeared out of nowhere, after weeks without a word, and begged him for comfort. She was being so, so unfair to him, still leaning on him like this, when he had already moved on.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t - I didn’t mean to. And it was a silly question. I’ll go.”

He opened his mouth. Closed it again. Shook his head as if to clear it. His speech was thick when he spoke again.

“Ash - wait, one more moment - I think I might be waking -”

She was gone before he could finish the thought.

*

They left for the city quickly after the negotiations unraveled. Mamae and Papae had some sort of meeting with Aunt Cass, all alone, but Ashara couldn’t bring herself to care about what was said behind the wards that her father set. She didn’t deserve to care. She was a bad person. She was happy they were going to war and she kept wanting to lean on Lucius even though she knew she shouldn’t. Even though she knew she should just let him go, because he was right to let her go, because she still loved him and she was an idiot and it was only a matter of time before he figured that out, and it wasn’t fair to put him in that position. 

She didn’t deserve anything.

“Your thoughts are loud again,” Cole said when he appeared to her that first night that they spent back at home. Ashara was grateful he was there to fill up the Fade with his presence. Lucius was calling. She could hear him. And she knew she shouldn’t answer.

And now Cole, with his sad eyes and the gentle tilt of his head, was another person she had let down.

“I’m sorry. I’m - I’m trying to remember the things you’ve been telling me. But it is hard. It’s so hard.”

“That’s fine, too. Lots of things are hard. I find that one of the hardest things is being kind to yourself. So many people are filled up with sharp little rocks that dig at their insides and then they get angry at themselves for being full of rocks, and being in pain, instead of digging the rocks out. Maybe that is what you could try when you wake up. Being kind to yourself. Just that.”

Just that.

Just that?

“Mamae, what do you do to be kind to yourself?” she asked her mother the next morning. Mamae set her mug down on the dining table, sat down, and blinked once or twice as though to clear her head.

“What do I do to be kind to myself?”

“Yes. When you are angry at yourself. When you hate yourself. What do you do?”

Mamae’s face became incredibly sad.

“Da’asha - I have to say that I don’t spend much time on hating myself. Or being angry with myself. Do you?”

Ashara felt a rush of embarrassment in her gut. “Lately. Yes. And - I guess sometimes before. Just not as badly? I’m sorry if it doesn’t make any sense -”

“No, no - sit down. Please. Let me take your hand.” Ashara obeyed, and her mother’s hand was tight and warm around her own. “I do know what you mean. I watched your father struggle with the same feelings. I still do, sometimes. You can ask him what he does to help himself in those moments. As for me - when I begin to doubt myself - what I have done with my life - I try to help someone else. It reminds me that I am a good person. That I have done good, and will continue to do good. I can’t be angry with myself, then.”

Compassion wasn’t always a knife in the dark.

She could be both.

“Thank you, Mamae.”

Mamae squeezed her hand again. “You’re going to be fine, sweet girl. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not next week or next month. But you’re going to be fine. I just know it.”

She was going to be fine - but she could take her time getting there.

Ashara felt those words click into place somewhere deep inside her. She didn’t have to be fine today. She just had to believe that she would be fine again  _ someday _ .

She carried that thought with her for the rest of the day - out into the garden where she sat and breathed deep the cool fall air - back into the house where she reread the parts of  _ The Tale of the Champion _ that she always liked best - and into the Fade that night. She gently rebuffed Cole’s attempt to reach her, and her father’s, and she quietly ignored Lucius’s call to enter his dream. She ignored the spirits who chattered about armies gathering and all the blood that would soon be spilled. She ignored the ones who taunted her for not being among the armies to protect her country and her people.

She focused only on herself. On that glowing ball of light she could hold in her hands. On how warm kindness felt in the Fade - warm as her mother’s hands - and on how if she could bathe herself in that kindness here, she could learn to do it in the waking world. She imagined flowers in bloom all around her, a riot of greens and golds and purples. She imagined herself blooming too. She would bloom again someday. She would be okay. She held that power in the palm of her hand, in sleeping or in waking.

She wanted to live, and do well, and be kind, and so she was going to.

She woke the next day ready to begin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ashara is turning a corner at last, even if what she is dealing with isn't easy <3
> 
> I'll be posting a sort of "interlude" focusing entirely on Lucius sometime very soon (it's already written - just needs editing). Until then, thank you for reading! As always, prompts, suggestions, comments and general discussion more than welcome here or on my [Tumblr](https://buttsonthebeach.tumblr.com/).


	12. Interlude: Lucius

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! I am calling this chapter an "interlude" because it does not directly advance the plot, and it focuses on Lucius, who is otherwise a very peripheral character. But, I love my sweet shy guy, and I think having a glimpse of his life now will make other things in the narrative clearer later. That said, you can skip this chapter easily as well.
> 
> The first half of the chapter, up to the point where it says "after" in italics, originally appeared on Tumblr as a prompt response asking about Lucius's reaction to thinking Ashara was dead, titled ["Lucius Alone"](https://buttsonthebeach.tumblr.com/post/173012311796/prompt-how-did-lucius-feel-when-he-heard-ashara). (Anon, whoever you are, you are still my favorite for sending that one <3) You can skip it if you read it on Tumblr.
> 
> Lucius briefly mentions something sexual, but it remains very vague.

_Before Clermont_

 

The morning after he returned from his latest trip to Vyrantium, Lucius woke late, cursed himself for a lazy fool, and had to rush to clean his teeth and comb out his hair and rifle through his wardrobe for something clean to wear. He should not have scheduled the meeting with the dwarven emissaries from Kal-Sharok so close to his trip. Maevaris told him as much. But his suppliers in Vyrantium only had so much of the stone he needed for crafting runes, and he preferred to inspect it himself rather than trust someone else, and it was a chance to present his proposal to the guild of printers there, and it was a stroke of luck that the emissaries were willing to see him at all, given their busy schedules and imminent return to Kal-Sharok -

“And won’t you want to see Rhea right away when you return, anyway?”

His heart did lift, remembering Mae’s teasing words before he left. It was a feeling that was half nervousness and half anticipation. Rhea did seem sad when he said he would be away. He did think of her on his journey. They wrote to each other. He wrote to her the day before returned, asking if she would be able to meet him for dinner that evening. Surely there was a response waiting for him now.

His hair combed, his teeth cleaned, a fresh robe found folded (crumpled) in his wardrobe, he headed out. Sure enough, there was a note waiting in the box on his door.

 

 _Lucius_ -

 

_If a busy man like you has time for me in his schedule, how can I refuse? I will meet you at the restaurant near the theatre, where we ate last time._

 

_Yours,_

_Rhea_

 

Again, the lift and flip in his chest. Nerves and anticipation. He thought of that meal, their first time dining alone, without Mae or her husband or Rhea’s brothers or any of their other acquaintances accompanying them. That was how they met after all - in that shifting tapestry of Minrathous society, those parties and dinners and dances. The restaurant was an extension of that - austere, refined, fashionable. Expensive. The men who waited on them were human, not elven. Of that Lucius was glad - even if the only reason they chose humans rather than elves was likely to show how expensive it was, so fine they could afford the finest help, and not because of any lofty beliefs. He avoided the restaurants where every server had pointed ears, and bruised arms.

On his long walk to the Magisterium, where he would meet the emissaries, he played back that dinner again, remembering the red of Rhea’s lips, the way she covered her mouth with her hand when she laughed. She was pale and light-haired like Mae - there was some distant family connection he could never remember - and the wine they drank brought a deep flush to her cheeks. She flushed again when he put his hand on the small of her back, guiding her out of the restaurant. They’d walked along the well-paved and well-lit streets near the restaurant and talked about their experiences in their respective Circles - his in Vyrantium and then in Minrathous, hers in Qarinus - and then there was a lull, long enough that he started to flex his hands nervously, that he wondered if he ought to touch her, or suggest something else they should do.

“I should go,” she said finally. “I have an early appointment to go to the docks with my brother. There’s a new ship he wishes to purchase and he wants a second set of eyes.”

She’d tilted her face up to him and stood close enough that Lucius knew what she wanted - and even though his heart beat faster, he still hesitated. This was a first. His first kiss with Rhea. His first kiss in almost a year.

He did kiss her. And again, when he went out on the ship with her and her brothers and several of her acquaintances a week later. Each one was short and sweet. She stepped away from him when they were done, so their bodies no longer touched.

As Lucius mounted the hill towards the Magisterium he paused at a cart selling pastries and stood for a moment in its shade, looking up at the grand building, thinking of that day on the ship, of the restaurant, of the party where he met Rhea. He turned the other way and faced the spire of the Circle where, until two years ago, he’d lived. He thought of the boy he’d been there. So frightened and alone, so ill-prepared for the cutthroat competition of trying to gain a patron, trying to make a life for himself. It was all behind him. His life was moving forward in new and exciting ways. His theory that electric runes could be used to power various machinery, like printing presses, were gathering traction and support. He was having dinner with Rhea that evening.

It didn’t feel the way he thought it would. Having all the things he wanted when he lived in the dormitories at the base of that spire. He wasn’t elated. He was - content, he supposed. He tried not to prod the feeling too hard. He finished his pastry, and he turned and continued making his way up the hill.

When he reached the Magisterium, it was buzzing with activity - more so than the last few times he’d been there, and certainly far busier than it should have been first thing on a dreary morning. His neck prickled. The faces of the couriers and servants were harried, and the few magisters he saw had knit brows.

“We should have known,” one said. “This sort of thing is in the blood. What did they think would happen when they gave the rabbits a country of their own?”

“We may be able to spin this to our favor. Argue that this is why the Lucerni’s latest elven bill of rights is ludicrous.”

Lucius’s heart that had lifted so high twisted now. Enasan. They were talking about Enasan. What happened?

“Lucius?”

It was Claudia, her dark eyebrows high with shock. She was staring at him like she’d seen a ghost. Her arms were full of books and scrolls.

“Well met, Claudia. What’s going on here?”

Now her eyebrows fell, and her dark eyes, too.

“You haven’t heard. When I saw you there, I thought you must have. I was going to come find you this afternoon and tell you… and then I saw you and hoped I wouldn’t have to.”

Lucius thought of his trip from Vyrantium. The speed of the public coach. How tired he’d been, how he had not listened to the gossip or asked for news whenever they stopped and changed horses.

“What happened?” he asked, even though he felt the knowledge growing inside his stomach, heavy like a stone. Something happened with Enasan, and if Claudia had planned to go out of her way to find him and tell him about it…

“Come with me,” she said.

People parted for Claudia, even though she was almost comically short, and only a junior member of the Magisterium, really more of a clerk for Dorian Pavus than anything else. Still, Lucius felt like his much longer legs had to work hard to keep up with her brisk pace. Or maybe it was only that his heart was beating faster as the knowledge, the fear, grew and grew.

“Is it Ashara?” he asked the moment they reached the little antechamber that served as Claudia’s office.

Claudia put down her books and her scrolls. Carefully. Slowly. Neatly. Then she finally met his eyes and there was grief in hers.

“Yes.”

Then she told him of Clermont - Ashara and the immigrants her group was tasked with escorting, and the Orlesian guards who stopped them. The Orlesian guards who were burned alive by a spell powered by Ashara’s own blood.

And Ashara was nowhere to be found.

He felt sick.

He sat down.

Ashara was missing. Feared dead.

Ashara could be dead.

“When did this happen?” he asked.

“Two or three days ago. Word only just reached us. Orlais is calling it an act of aggression by Enasan.”

“That’s absurd. Ash wouldn’t - couldn’t -”

Claudia sat down in her own chair, on the other side of the desk from him. She straightened one of the scrolls. She slumped, a little. It was unlike her.

“Well, she could. You and I were both at the temple that day. At Skyhold when we saved Ellana. We both know what she’s capable of.”

Lucius winced as he always did at the memory. Ashara and her unearthly blue eyes and the two voices speaking as one from her mouth, and the cold fury with which she - no - the ancient elven spirit possessing her tried to kill them. How she was able to relive memories of blood magic rituals so vividly that she could explain how to perform them - even if her father was ultimately the one who did.

“That wasn’t her,” he said. “Whatever it was - it wasn’t her. And Solas fixed her.”

Claudia shrugged, and sat forward in her chair. She ran a hand through her short black hair.

“As far as we know. But do we really know what happened that day?”

Another memory, this time of the crunch of new snow under his feet, and Ashara at his side, nervous, and then elated, as she said that she wanted them to be together, no matter the distance that separated them. And the words she said before that - _there are things I can’t tell you. Not because I don’t want to - because I want to keep you safe._

But still. Still. This was Ashara. _Ashara_. Her name rang in his mind again and again and again like the Chantry’s call to mass. It was the only word he could think now.

“Do you really think she did this?” he asked, his voice edged with disbelief.

Claudia sighed. “No. Not really. I believe that she killed them. I believe that she may have used blood magic to do it. But I don’t think it was unprovoked. Something is going on here. We spoke to Ellana through the crystal last night. She’s in Orlais now, trying to get to the bottom of it.” She gestured to her neatly stacked books and scrolls with another weary sigh. “I’m looking through some documents for Dorian now. This is a disaster for our newest bill to promote elven rights. I have so much support to salvage now -”

“Is that honestly what you care about right now? Ashara is out there. She could be dead. And you’re worried about some bill? Do you care so little for her?”

Lucius’s anger came on him sudden and hot the way it always did. He did not get angry often. He was disoriented. His whole body felt too light and too rigid all at once. His heart hammered, a counterpoint to the melody of her name in his mind.

Claudia sat up straight now, her usual impeccable posture. She put both her hands on the table, like she might stand at any moment.

“Where was all of this care and concern the last two times she was in Minrathous, Lucius? Because if I recall correctly, I am the one who has always made time to see her. I am the one who saw her the night before she left for that damned town.”

Lucius’s anger always went quickly, too. Claudia’s words pricked him right in the lungs. Deflated him entirely.

“And what would you have me do, anyway? It would take weeks to get to Orlais. Ellana is already there. Her father is no doubt combing the Fade for her every hour of every day. What can you or I do except pray to the Maker that she is safe?”

He thought of telling her how long he prayed to the Maker to make his brother breathe again, to bring his parents back. How hollow every prayer since then felt. He looked away instead.

“I care for her too. Maybe not quite the same way you do. But I may have lost one of my dearest friends, Lucius. I’ll be damned if I also lose the chance to improve the lives of thousands of her people.”

There was a raw note to Claudia’s voice now - one he had not heard before. She kept her emotions close. But when he looked at her, he could see her fear and heartache as plainly as he felt his own. On impulse, he reached out and put his hand on top of hers. She squeezed it, and offered him a small smile. He withdrew his hand.

“Why were you here, if you didn’t know?” she asked him after a pause.

For a moment, even he couldn’t remember. Then he did, and he did not even feel a jolt of anxiety at the thought that he was late. He was thinking of the last time he saw Ash. When had it been? How many months ago? What had their parting words to each other been?

“I have a meeting with emissaries from Kal-Sharok. I want to employ some of their enchanters in crafting my new runes. Perhaps they will be less expensive than the ones I spoke to from Orzammar, since they will not have to travel so far.”

“You should go, then. I am sure they are very busy.” They both rose, and Claudia walked him to the door. She paused in the entryway. “If I hear anything - you will be the first to know.”

“Likewise.”

The emissaries from Kal-Sharok were stoic, suspicious women. Lucius knew this. He also knew that he was not a charismatic man, that he was too shy and polite to draw others out of their own

shell. He’d been preparing himself mentally to be brighter, cheerier, more confident when he met with them. He even felt that process was easier than it had been in the past. He _was_ more confident. He was Lucius Talvas, Laetan, yes, but a Laetan with his own flat and his own money, and a talented mage with his own theories and his own plans for the applications of electrified runes - and he was kind, and he cared for others, and he deserved the good things in his life.

Sitting there, across from the dwarves from Kal-Sharok, he couldn’t connect to that feeling again. He could only picture Ashara bloodied and dead on some field in Orlais.

He didn’t think his presentation went that badly. He didn’t think it went well, either. He didn’t care. He walked back out of the Magisterium and stood on its stone steps looking at the ancient, hazy sprawl of Minrathous and he still thought only of her.

He could not remember the last time he saw her. Not clearly. Claudia was right. He had avoided her the last two times she was in town. He could admit that now. Things with Rhea were new then. He didn’t know what to say to her about them. Even now the thought wrenched his heart. He wanted more than anything to turn a corner and see Ashara standing there, and yet if he did, he would not know how to tell her about Rhea. _I have kissed someone else since the last time I kissed you._

But he had seen her before Rhea. Not even that long before they met. Why couldn’t he remember where or when? Had they gone to watch Claudia debate another junior member of the Magisterium? No, that was the year before. Was it that brief lunch on the outskirts of the city? How had they parted? He could not remember. He returned to his flat in a fog and stood there, listless, lost, staring about as if that would help him remember. Did he make it clear to her before she went that he would not have the life he had now if it had not been for her? That her belief in him - her warm, constant love - were the first seeds of that confidence that brought him here?

His eyes prickled. He wiped them. He went to his room.

His memory of the last time they saw each other might have been strangely vague, but there was one memory that would not dim. He stood there in his too-quiet flat and he could still picture her exactly as she was the morning after they made love for the last time - the moment their relationship was truly over. She was awake before him, of course. Sitting up on the bed, the covers around her waist, bare above them. Her back was to him. And for a moment in his bleary, half-awake state, he just looked at her. He did not move or make a sound. He just looked at her, and tried to memorize the exact curve of her back, and tried to tell himself that this was the last moment he would ever love her. That his love was something he could box up and put in a drawer in his bedside table.

_If I never see her again - if I never see her again -_

He couldn’t finish the thought. Not standing there remembering the cloud of her beautiful curls and her freckled shoulders like it was yesterday. Not while he could still picture the soft, sad smile she gave him when at last she turned and saw he was awake, and it was really over.

It was really over. It was.

The fog had lifted somewhat by the time he went and met Rhea at the restaurant. In its place was a biting anxiety, a tenseness in his shoulders, an uneasy buzz in the mana pooling in his body. The noise of the city - the Sopporati merchants hawking their wares, the clatter of horses, the whoosh and crackle of spells - grated on him. His heart did flutter at the sight of Rhea. Her gold and silver gown, which left her shoulders bare. The sheen of her hair by the magelights in front of the restaurant. Her smile. She was the accomplished daughter of an Altus family, and she smiled at him, and stood on tiptoe to kiss him, the orphan Laetan with only modest prospects. He was lucky.

Was Ashara?

“You look tired,” she said. “Was your journey difficult?”

“Yes,” he said. He offered her his arm. “Shall we?”

Her perfume was soft and floral. She squeezed his arm and looked up at him, smiling again for no reason at all, while they waited to be seated. She was a quiet person, like him. Before his trip to Vyrantium he was beginning to feel the kind of comfortable silence settle in between them that he so cherished in his friendships. Now it felt oppressive. He wanted suddenly to go home - or to Claudia, who would understand what he felt. He had not told Rhea about Ashara. She was under no illusions that she was the first woman he’d been involved with, of course - but there had been no reason, no need for specifics. And to tell her now - his own heart aching with words he did not want to admit even to himself -

“I take it you hear what happened with Enasan? My mother was called into an emergency session of the Magisterium just for it.”

Void take him. He would not be able to escape it.

“Yes, I did.”

“It’s awful. I hope they get to the bottom of it soon.”

“Yes. It seems exactly like the sort of thing that Orlais would do.”

Rhea blinked, taken aback. “You assume the fault is Orlais’s?”

"You assume the fault is Enasan's?"

The server brought them their first course - salads. Rhea immediately began picking at hers.  
  
"I don't really assume anything now. Everything is so murky," she said.   
  
"The fault must be Orlais's. What does Enasan stand to gain from antagonizing one of the largest empires in Thedas?" Lucius was aware that his voice was perhaps too urgent, too heated. He could not stop himself. He hated that feeling. He felt sick looking at his salad now.   
  
Rhea's hazel eyes were narrow with concern and confusion. "You feel very strongly about this."   
  
"I feel strongly about any injustice. The elves have always been treated monstrously by our people. This is just another example."   
  
"You're not wrong." She seemed nervous now. She twirled her fork in the mound of rich, dark greens. "The truth will come out, I am sure."   
  
This was his moment to tell her. He was not only upset by the injustice but by the thought of blue eyes that might be closed forever. But how? How could he when there was a feeling he didn't want to name in the back of his mind? Claudia was right. He didn't care for Ashara the way she did. He thought again of her sitting in his bed that last morning. Then he looked at Rhea. Her shoulders were bare too. She was intelligent and worldly and she blushed whenever he complimented her. He was lucky. His hand tightened on his fork.   
  
"The mage involved. Ashara Lavellan. I know her. We were - are - close. We were lovers."   
  
Rhea had a bite of salad halfway to her mouth. She paused, and put it down. She folded her hands carefully in her lap and sat still and straight. It was a trained posture. He wondered if they’d made her balance books on her head when she was a young girl.   
  
"I ended the relationship a year ago. We - wanted different things in life. But we have remained friends, and thinking of her out there - alone and frightened - or hurt -"   
  
Rhea's stayed still and straight. Her eyebrows were lowered, and her lips were puckered, and she was a perfect picture of concern.   
  
"I see. I am sorry that you are so worried for your friend."   
  
Looking at her, wondering if she was actually sorry, wondering what she was thinking now, if telling her was the right thing to do, he missed Ashara with a pain that blinded him. He missed how every thought, every feeling she had flitted across her face like clouds over the sun. He missed the way words tumbled from her mouth one after the other, how he could trace the workings of her mind in them, how she grew embarrassed that she was so easy to read, that she always said everything that was on her mind, and he missed the softness of her forehead under his lips when he kissed that embarrassment away.   
  
He missed Ashara.   
  
There was another word there, a shadow enveloping "missed." One he did not even want to name in the privacy of his mind.

“Thank you,” Lucius said. “I worry that I won’t be good company tonight, as a result. I am sorry.”

She reached across the table and took his hand. “Let us talk of something else, then. I want to hear about your trip to Vyrantium, and your meeting with the dwarves from Kal-Sharok. Do you think they will agree to help you manufacture the runes? And did the seneschal in Vyrantium agree to put your proposal for powering their printing presses with your runes before the guild of printers?”

Lucius did not want to talk. Long conversations in noisy places were draining on a good day, when he was full of energy and looking forward to them. His lungs were heavy now. He took a deep breath anyway, and began.

Rhea kissed him when he helped her into her carriage at the end of the night. It was a short, delicate kiss. It left no impression on his lips, or in his chest. He was distracted. Every other time he’d kissed her it had given him a little thrill. It was natural that he was preoccupied. That he felt helpless. If only there was something he could do from all the way in Minrathous - something to help Ashara, if she was out there, to assure her that she was not alone -

He could call to her.

Neither of them had the money for sending crystals like Magister Pavus had, but Ashara was a somniari, and she had taught him how to reach out to her in the Fade.

“It’s like music,” she told him once, lying next to him in bed. They’d pressed their palms together and were studying the difference between their hands. Her long, narrow fingers against his thicker, blockier ones. He would have made a bad printer, if his family had survived, and if he had not been a mage. “I can hear different songs when I’m in the Fade, and I can go to them. Tonight, I’ll teach you a song that will be just ours, and when I hear it, I’ll know you want to see me.”

“I always want to see you,” he’d said, and he’d kissed her, and they’d forgotten about songs for a while.

What she meant by a song was really more of a hum, or a vibration, at least to him, although she claimed to hear the melody. It reminded him of the way he could sift through different energies pouring across the Veil when he cast a spell, how he could tell fire from ice, except he couldn’t feel this energy in his body. It was only in his mind. If he became aware that he was dreaming, and willfully ignored everything the Fade tried to show him, and recalled the sound she’d taught him, eventually it would fill his whole mind, until there was nothing else. Just that constant, pulsing hum.

He focused on nothing but that hum for days.

He went to Dorian Pavus’s house several times, and to Claudia’s flat, hoping for news. They spent a sad, silent dinner together, the three of them, joined later by the Iron Bull.

“She’s fine,” Dorian kept blustering. “It’s impossible that she’s otherwise. She is a talented mage, and a smart girl, and the Maker would not do this to Ellana.”

“Andraste preserve her,” Claudia murmured at his side.

Lucius wished that he still believed in the Maker.

He chose to believe in the song instead.

Every night he focused and focused and focused and waited for that moment when the Fade would ripple and melt and change and she would be with him and everything would be suddenly, vividly real around her. But he was no somniari. It was hard work. He woke each day more tired than the last. The news coming from Orlais was not good. He had not heard from Kal-Sharok. He did not have the will or the energy to work on any of his projects. Rhea had gone out of town, back home to Qarinus, to present some of her own research on how Force magic could propel various vehicles. She wrote to him, and he wrote back.

He started to relax the hum in his mind when he slept. Ashara would not want him to run himself ragged. Not for her sake. It became a secondary focus as he dreamt, after avoiding the various temptations of the Fade, and of his own mind (wealth, power, bringing his parents and his brother back, desire demons that he turned from immediately before he could see their faces). It was Rage that finally got a foothold in him one night. He dreamt of the harbor, and the cart where he liked to get salted fish to snack on, and every time he tried to order it, the peddler would only give him flowers, and the lucid part of his mind knew that the peddlers was some hapless spirit of the Fade doing its best to play its part in a world it barely understood but fucking Void, he was sick of things that didn’t work and sick of a world that didn’t make sense and sick of feeling helpless and afraid and all the things he’d felt since he was a thirteen-year-old orphan who’d watched his only brother die and -

And Ashara was there.

Like a wave breaking on the shore.

The flowers were gone. The skewer of salted fish was in his hand. He could smell the salt of the sea. And she was there, standing in front of him, brown hair and freckled cheeks and soft, full lips.

“Ash,” he said. His name for her. The way she’d first introduced herself. The first teasing joke they shared. “It worked. I’ve tried every night since Claudia came and told me you were missing. I am so - so -”

He wanted to hold her.

He wanted to wrap his arms around her and not let go. She stood there, looking at him with pain in her eyes, and he would have given anything in the world to make that pain disappear. For a moment that feeling worried him - was she another trick of the Fade, a demon who would seduce him into giving himself up because he thought it might ease her suffering? But - no - each freckle was where it should have been, and the same curls fell loose from the ribbon that tied her hair back. She was as hasty in the Fade as she was in waking.

He loved her.

It was clear as glass there, in the Fade.

He loved her.

“I’m sorry I worried you. I - it was true about the blood magic. I had to. And it damaged my connection to the Fade until now.”

“I don’t care what you did to survive. I’m just happy you did.”

He meant every word, and he wondered if she sensed that. If she knew, too, what he was thinking. He loved her. It didn’t fill him with fear or regret. It was a simple statement of fact, like looking at a cloudy day and predicting it would rain. He loved her, and he could not change that, any more than he could change the color of his eyes, or bring his brother back from the dead.

They walked through the dreamy version of Minrathous she constructed, and he was in a daze of relief, and he did not even have to question or fear his love for her until she mentioned Rhea. And then he had to pause, reign in, consider. He’d ended things for a reason. He loved her, yes - but she was bright and talented and full of adventure and an endless desire to learn more about the world around her - and he could not follow where she wanted to go. He needed stability, a legacy - he had no family that would catch him if he failed, not like her.

But -

“Well, I’d love to meet her when I go back to Minrathous next. Though I suppose I don’t know when that will be.”

Lucius tried to imagine Ashara and Rhea meeting when she said that. How would Rhea react to Ashara, with all of her energy and her utter lack of well-bred poise? The next time Ashara was in Minrathous, would he and Rhea even be involved anymore? His every thought of her felt gray and thin in that dreamy yellow sun.

And if he and Rhea were not involved anymore - if, perhaps, Ashara had changed, or if he himself had -

These were thoughts he needed to examine when he was awake, under a colder sun.

And he needed her to be safe and whole and alive when he was done.

“I would be sad not to see you in Minrathous again,” he said. “But above all, Ash - stay safe. Please? If you have to stop working for Vir’anor - if you can’t travel through Orlais for a while - then don’t. Don’t push through just because you want to.”

She furrowed her brows. She was so fierce, so unafraid, even now, already prepared to argue. Then she looked away with something like shame in her eyes, and his heart ached. They were standing at the crest of a hill, looking out over the city. Well, she was. He was looking at her.

The rest of their conversation was fuzzy in his mind when he woke, but her presence was so real that he reached out his hand in the bed, half expecting to find her there. He sat there a while, bathing in the relief that she was alive, and turning the thought over and over again in his mind. He loved her. He loved her.

But he’d put that love in a box once before, and put it carefully aside, and that was what he would have to do know. She was hundreds of miles away, and she was on her own journey, processing what she had been through - what her country would likely soon go through. She did not need the added complication of his own feelings. He would be there for her, whenever she needed him - but as a friend. It was the right thing to do.

So he lay back in bed, and closed his eyes, and thought again of the profile of her face as she stood on the crest of that dream-hill. Her perfect nose and her angular jaw. He let himself love her a half hour longer. Then he got up to start his day.

 

_After_

 

He didn’t see her in the Fade again until the night before she was to begin her arcane warrior training for the army, and he had never wanted so badly to see her in person before. Not even when they were lovers, and he longed for her touch the way a starving man might long for food.

“This is a terrible plan, and she has to know it,” Claudia said, pushing her short black hair back impatiently, stirring her cream into her coffee with rather more force than necessary, when they met the next morning.

“I know,” Lucius said.

He knew it the night before, in that ethereal version of Minrathous she conjured for them. And it frightened him even more when he was awake than it had when he was dreaming. He wanted to take her by the shoulders and beg her to see reason - to see that she was risking all the things about herself that made her beautiful and irreplaceable in his eyes. That need to see her, to tell her so in person, outpaced every other desire he’d ever had to see her in the waking world.

He needed to push it down.

He needed to push it down, because it was already too late - she had probably already reported for duty - and because that feeling verged too close to opening the box he was trying to keep locked.

He went to Rhea’s townhouse after his breakfast with Claudia was done, and looked over schematics for her latest horseless carriage idea. He put his hand over hers to guide her finger and suggest improvements to the design. She giggled and bumped his hip with her own, and had a servant bring them a midmorning snack of Rivaini dates and oranges from Seheron - exotic treats the dark-skinned girl with her long, elven ears would never be able to afford on a servant’s salary. Treats she eyed longingly while standing at attention, waiting for any further instruction.

“Here, you should have one,” he said, holding out one of each.

“Oh, I could not, my lord. It would be far too rich for my tastes. And my brothers would be so jealous.”

“Do they work here too?” he asked.

“No, my lord. They do odd jobs here and there. Fill in at workshops and the like.”

She barely met his eyes as they spoke. Ashara always pierced you with her gaze. So did her mother. So did her father.

How did Rhea live here, surrounded by people she saw every day, who waited on her every need, and yet did not want to look her in the eye? How did she stand it? How had he ever thought _he_ could stand it? How had he ever imagined himself as a magister in a huge house with servants just like this girl?

He asked Rhea, once the girl was gone. She stiffened.

“Well - I grew up like this. So did my parents. We treat them very well. I make sure to pay my servants better than anyone else in this neighborhood, and I give them time to go to school or visit their families if they need it. I am a good mistress.”

He wanted to ask how much was _better than anyone else in the neighborhood_ \- if it was enough for that elf to hope that she might one day own a townhouse this fine, send her children to better schools than the ramshackle, few and far between schoolhouses that the Magisterium was grudgingly constructing for elves. If Rhea would gladly welcome those elven children as playmates for her own.

Lucius shook his head. The dates were no longer sweet on his tongue. He pushed the rest of the ones he’d taken onto the serving dish.

“What is it?” Rhea asked anxiously.

“It’s - nothing. I’ve just realized that I never want to be anyone’s master. No matter how well I treat them.”

They sat in an intense awkwardness that made his jaw hurt. Neither of them looked at each other.

“I forget sometimes,” she said. “That you have had very different - experiences with elves, than I have.”

Her tone suggested that she did not forget at all.

“Do you mean Ashara?”

“I suppose, yes. And that you did not grow up having them in your household.”

“That I did not grow up with slaves.”

Rhea looked away abruptly, out the massive windows that led to her balcony. “I was very young when the slaves were freed. I barely remember those days. In my mind they have always been servants who deserve a good wage and good treatment.”

She didn’t say _in my mind they have always been equals_.

“I ought to go,” Lucius said, standing. “I need to respond to some correspondence from Kal-Sharok. I need to go over my own designs. We will be making a prototype next week. I can’t afford any delays.”

Rhea turned from the window, her eyes big and pleading.

“I could come to your flat tonight. I could even - stay.”

They had slept together once, in her big and too-soft bed in that very townhouse. She had been very quiet, and difficult to read, and he had been so nervous that he was doing something wrong that coming was a relief, because he’d half feared he might not. He entreated her to show him what would please her when his usual tricks didn’t seem to satisfy, but her face had gone red and she’d said that it was fine, that she was tired, and he was welcome to stay the night. He had, and they’d eaten breakfast together in her bed, and it occurred to him now that a servant must have brought it, must have seen them lying together there.

“Only if you really want to,” he said lamely.

“I do, Lucius. I do.”

Lucius counted the elves he saw on his way home. There were some who were well-dressed, yes. He even saw one with a mage’s staff (though perhaps he had a master who needed it fixed). But still they tended to live in work in the less savory parts of the city, still he saw too many begging for food, still humans passed by them as if they did not exist.

Every one of them was Ashara - or could be.

Especially if there was war, and Orlais won.

What would be worse - hearing that Ashara died in some bloody battlefield, or hearing that Enasan was overcome, and she was living in some alienage?

He couldn’t bear the thought of either. He needed the idea of her out there in the world, even if he couldn’t have her in reality. He needed the idea that she was living, thriving, growing. And the elves of Tevinter needed that idea, too. That there was a place where elves were not just servants, forever seeing delights they could not taste.

*

Lucius did not meet Ashara in the Fade for weeks.

Weeks in which his work progressed well, in which he produced an actual working prototype of a printing press that ran on magical energy. He eagerly researched and theorized how to make it faster, more efficient - to see if there was a way that the type could be rearranged magically instead of by hand - he poured himself into it, saw other people only occasionally, when Maevaris barged into his flat and demanded proof that he had been eating well and changing his clothes every now and then, or when Claudia invited him out, or when Rhea came by. She was busy too. That’s the excuse they both kept making.

He was aware, through those sources, that things were not progressing well between Orlais and Enasan. The brief Orlesian civil war was winding down, and that meant that the now-unchallenged Emperor Etienne Villiers could bring the might of his chevaliers down on Enasan instead. He knew Dorian and Claudia were hard at work in the Magisterium, making a case for why the Imperium should support Enasan if it truly came to war. But he also knew through his conversations with them that Rhea’s mother was voting against their efforts. As were many others, of course - but that one stung the most.

He also heard through Maevaris that Ashara had failed her arcane warrior training.

“Yes, Dorian spoke to her mother. She’s back at home. I am sure she is fine.”

Fine?

He’d seen how Ashara handled failure. He’d been the one who held her in Skyhold’s library as she sobbed out her frustration and fear when her first attempt to save her mother failed. He’d been the one who followed her through the eluvian to Enasan itself because she still couldn’t handle the thought of failure. He’d held her through her guilt and terror at the danger she put them in when they went to that temple - something else she saw as a failure, even though the knowledge she gained ultimately saved her mother.

He knew Ashara was not fine.

That was why he did not hesitate when she came to him in the Fade again - suddenly, like a clap of thunder, when he was dreaming of tinkering with a printing press the way his father used to. There was only a moment where he didn't realize that it was really her, and not just a spirit playing on his fantasies. And then he did not even need to read her face to know that she was not fine.

 _I love her_ , he thought, looking at her hollowed-out eyes, her shaking hands.

“Ash - are you alright?” he asked, as if he did not know the answer.

 _I love her,_ he thought, as he took off the glasses he’d dreamed of wearing - his father’s, he realized.

“No,” she said.

 _I love her_ , he thought as he stood slowly, and stopped himself from moving any closer to her. _I love her, and I can’t go to her. It isn’t right. Not like this. Not now._

“I’m a good person, right? I’m good, aren’t I?”

“Of course you are,” he said, almost before she was done talking

“I didn’t even tell you what’s wrong,” she said. She clenched her hands. He saw the tears standing at the edges of her eyes. “I didn’t even tell you why I asked.”

“It doesn’t matter.” He forced himself to remain still. _Don’t go to her. Don’t move_. “I will never doubt the answer to that question. You are a good person, Ashara Lavellan. And I did hear what happened with the arcane warrior training. I’ve - we’ve - been worried about you.”

He threw the _we’ve_ in at the last moment. He couldn’t expose himself too much. This was the Fade - her element - and she could read so much here. She couldn’t know. His stomach lurched, and not just because he hated not telling her, hated trying to shove this truth down inside himself and ignore it, but because he was waking. Someone was trying to wake him.

Ashara was shaking her head furiously, her form already growing more indistinct.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t - I didn’t mean to. And it was a silly question. I’ll go.”

She didn’t mean to what? His stomach lurched again.

“Ash - wait, one more moment - I think I might be waking -”

She was gone before he woke to the sound of the knocking on his door.

It was a courier from the blacksmith he’d spoken to recently about doing work to assemble several prototype printing presses, with the promise that he might have the contract to make all of them if they were successful. He had accepted the offer and wanted to meet early that morning. Lucius was more frustrated than he should have been by the news, if only because it pulled him from the dream. If only because the blacksmith wrote in his reply that he could promise that _only the finest and most well-trained human help Minrathous has to offer_.

“Tell him I accept,” Lucius said to the courier. “But only if he will consent to hiring and training elven workers alongside the human ones.”

The courier raised her eyebrows in surprise, but said nothing. Lucius dressed quickly after she left. He knew where he needed to go.

He had never gone to the back entrance of Rhea’s townhouse before, but it was easy enough to find, and sure enough there were elves in the small walled courtyard there, beginning the day’s washing and cooking. The elf who had waited on them with the dates and oranges recognized him at once.

“Master Talvas - the mistress did not tell me you were expected. You should go to the front so -”

“I am not here to see Rhea. What is your name?”

She eyed him with suspicion. The other elves did too. Of course they did. Well-dressed young human men usually only wanted one thing from vulnerable young female elves. He tried to smile encouragingly, to make sure his posture was relaxed and friendly, that he was not to close to her, or making her feel trapped.

“Octavia,” she said.

“Octavia, you said your brothers mostly do odd work. Do they want anything steadier?”

Octavia exchanged a wary glance with the elf closest to her, the one doing the wash. “Of course. Who doesn’t?”

“I want to offer them an opportunity, then. I will be working with a highly-regarded blacksmith - here, let me give you his name and address - and I want them to work with us. As an apprenticeship, of sorts -”

This was a terrible idea, he realized even as he wrote the name and address. He hadn’t even gotten the approval from the blacksmith yet. He had no idea if Octavia’s brothers were skilled or reliable. But as he handed her the paper, as he saw the light in her eyes, he realized that that didn’t matter. If the blacksmith said no, he didn’t want to work with him. If Octavia’s brothers were unreliable, he would find other elves who were.

He couldn’t help Ashara. Not here. Not now. But this was what she would want. The next time she questioned whether or not she was good he could say _look, look - look what you have inspired in me, how far your goodness spreads_.

“This is - this is very kind of you, my lord,” Octavia said. “Opportunities like this - they are rare.”

“It’s the right thing to do,” he said in reply. And that was true, too - and perhaps more important than the fact that this was what Ashara would want. He shouldn't have to have loved an elf (to love her still) to know that this was right. The rest of Tevinter needed to see it too.

“Lucius?”

Rhea’s voice - calling from the balcony above the courtyard. She was still in her dressing gown, and she looked utterly baffled.

“Rhea - I was going to come around to the front in a minute,” he said, though the idea hadn’t entered his head yet.

“Well - come on, then.”

He knew before he reached the front of the house that he would end things. Not because she was cruel or evil - because he did not love her, and because he knew he would never want the kind of life she had grown up expecting. Because she had grown up surrounded by people that she didn't see as people, even if she didn't use those words herself. He took a deep breath before he knocked on the door. He was ready to begin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time, we'll be back to our regularly scheduled plot advancement/how-bad-can-this-get extravaganza!
> 
> As always, prompts, suggestions, comments and general discussion more than welcome here or on my [Tumblr](https://buttsonthebeach.tumblr.com/).


	13. Chapter 13

In war, there was always something to do. Maps to check. Strategies to discuss. Meetings to hold. Troops to inspect. Ellana liked that about war. She needed it right now. Something to distract her from thoughts of the look on Ashara’s face when she said there would be war, and to stop the last words she exchanged with Cassandra from ringing in her ears.

The Divine had come to their tent the night the talks fell apart, although she didn’t come as Divine. She came as Cassandra, wearing battered leathers and a simple cloak, no headdress to hide her gray, close-cropped hair.

“See reason, Ellana,” she said. “You did not give these talks a chance to succeed.”

“And you helped put a man who would see my people destroyed on the throne of the largest human empire in Thedas.”

Cassandra threw her hands up in frustration.

“You are being unfair. You yourself were working alongside Villiers before all of this. He was an enemy to de Pelletier, and wanted justice for what happened in Clermont.”

“And the instant it was politically advantageous to him, he capitalized on the rising anti-elven sentiment in Orlais and used it to win himself a crown,” Solas said. His voice was cold, where Cassandra’s voice and her own were full of the warmth of rising anger. “I note that you have not even asked for our proof that he is behind the latest incident. The one in Avignon.”

“Your agents already delivered it to me. To call it proof is tenuous, at best, but I believe that we can uncover more. But I can’t do that when all you do is give them more and more reason to go to war with your country.”

“Because that’s what Villiers wants, Cassandra. I realized that today. There is nothing we can say, nothing we can do, that will prevent this. He wants to fight. He wants to destroy us. Will the Chantry take his side?”

“Of course not -”

“Then withdraw your support from him. Say that new information has come to light that makes him unfit to rule Orlais in the Maker’s eyes.”

“And - what? Cast Orlais into civil war again?”

“Villiers slaughtered innocents. He slaughtered my people.”

“And you put Celene on the throne, knowing it was she who burned the alienage of Halamshiral.”

Those words stung, and stung deep, burned in her heart.

“Celene was -”

“What? Your only option? How many do you see before me now, Ellana? Would you have me plunge Orlais further into chaos?”

Ellana planted her feet. She summoned the feeling she had earlier that day back into her mind. She thought of the responsibility she had to her people.

“No, but I would not see my people pay for their stability. And may I remind you that when you became Divine - through the Inquisition’s support - you swore to do better by my people. Tell me - is there a single elven priest in your Chantry? Have you agreed to a single petition sent by the Andrastian elves of Enasan, asking that they be ministered to by priests of their own race?”

Cassandra looked away. They had not spoken of this issue in some time. And Ellana had never brought it up with such force, such anger, in her tone. But she was tired. Tired of trying to play both sides - trying to give her people the lives they deserved without upsetting humans in the process, trying to wait patiently for all the wrongs to be righted.

“The Chantry has done wrong by my people, Divine Victoria. Over, and over, and over again. You have a chance to stand against that now. To say that elven lives matter just as much as human ones. To say that the stability of our new homeland matters just as much as that of Orlais.”

Cassandra was still looking away. When she turned to face Ellana once more, her jaw was set.

“And let me guess - your decision to cooperate with a Chantry-led investigation of the Veil hinges on my response to this idea.”

This time Ellana looked away, towards Solas, whose eyes were still on Cassandra. She had not intended to make that threat. But if Cassandra brought it up first -

“I think it’s fair to say that if we are at war with Orlais, we won’t have the time or resources to dedicate to your investigation. That it could leave us vulnerable.”

Ellana hated the delicate words the instant they left her mouth. Josephine and Leliana would be proud of her how far she had come. How she had thought of them on the spot. But she hated it - because she knew Cassandra would. And sure enough, her old friend’s eyes softened with sadness, and she shook her head.

“I never thought it would be like this, Ellana. That you would speak in half-truths. To me, of all people. That you would choose politics over what is right.”

Ellana’s chest ached. How had things gotten so twisted up? She had to lay herself bare. To make Cassandra see. She knew she was on the edge of an abyss here - about to step back or to fall in.

“That isn’t what is happening here, Cassandra. I am fighting for the survival of my people. Of my family. That is all I am ever trying to do. I would never willingly hurt other people unless it was for a good reason. You must know that. You must trust that.”

She had already said those words once, back in Halamshiral. Maybe if she kept saying them, her old friend would finally believe them. Cassandra’s eyes flickered between Ellana and Solas. Then they hardened.

“I don’t know if I can anymore.”

She left the tent.

And she left Ellana brooding over those words in the days to come, obsessing over what she had and had not said. Over whether or not she should have just told Cassandra the truth.  _ Yes, we are weakening the Veil, but it is so slow and strategic that it will never harm anyone, and you have our word on that. Our word is good. You can trust us. _

But  _ if _ \-  _ if _ that promise was not enough - it could have been their undoing.

Had she made the right decision? To shy away from the truth? To fling the gauntlet down in front of Villiers, to force the issue of war?

Her head hurt with such questions ringing in them.

Her heart hurt when Caralina’s agents caught and killed Chantry agents attempting to infiltrate Enasan, bringing with them notes and implements that proved they were there to investigate the Veil.

She had not been able to bring herself to send Cassandra the response she wrote to the incident. She only really wanted to write one thing.

_ Why are you making me do this? _

She knew it was the question on Cassandra’s lips, too.

The formal declaration of war came only three days after they left the summit, carried by an Orlesian diplomatic envoy. They laid out the crimes of Enasan as:  _ attempting to incite rebellion among Orlesian subjects; murder of Orlesian subjects; conspiracy to overthrow the Orlesian crown; defiance of the Chantry and the Maker’s laws _ . They said that war could be avoided if Enasan would admit guilt in these matters, and if they agreed to become a vassal state.

Ellana wore Dalish armor that day, swirling green and brown and made with ironbark. Even the prosthetic arm she wore was covered in twisting vines and the three trees, for Enasan and Andruil. She wished so badly that she still had her vallaslin as she stood from her seat and looked the Orlesians dead in their masked eyes.

“We are the last of the Elvhen,” she said. “Never again shall we submit.”

The Orlesians stood stiffly before her. Then the foremost said:

“À la guerre.”

_ To war _ .

They were given a polite but armed escort out of the country. Ellana and the rest of the council did not sleep that night. They stayed up late in the council chambers, pouring over maps, discussing supply lines, vulnerable points, strategies for victory, letters to be written to various leaders persuading them that Enasan only wanted to defend itself and its borders against false accusations.

“Then you do not intend to retake the Dales?” Arlanal asked, her tone carefully neutral, her hands clasping her ironbark staff.

“No,” Ellana said reflexively. But she wanted to right historical wrongs, didn’t she? Wasn’t that what she’d all but thrown in Cassandra’s face? And weren’t the Dales promised to her people in the Chant of Light itself? She grimaced, and took another sip of her willowbark tea. All it seemed to do was dull the headache at this point. She knew she ought to eat something, but her stomach was so full of knots that it seemed impossible. They were at war with Orlais. It was official now.

“It would be foolish to try,” Abelas added. “We do not have the force to hold such a large area, and it could very well provoke the Chantry’s own forces if that has not already happened - or even provoke some other human nation to send aid to the Orlesians. Our greatest chance of success lies in defending our own borders and using the wilds of Enasan to our favor, as my Sentinels did for so long.”

“Agreed,” Ellana said.

“Then it is settled,” Caralina said. “The goal is to hold our own borders long enough to exhaust the Orlesians into surrender, or until my agents can uncover sufficient evidence proving that Villiers has been provoking this war for some time, and to his own gain.”

“Hopefully that is enough to convince our allies in Ferelden and the Free Marches and Antiva and Nevarra to censure him and support us, even if it is only in word and not in deed,” Ilriane added. She looked exhausted. She was young, to bear this burden - though she was older than Ellana herself had been when she became Inquisitor, and when she founded a nation and pardoned Solas. It was strange how your perception of age changed as you aged.

“I will speak to Dorian - to Magister Pavus. To see if there is any chance of censure from the Imperium as well,” Ellana said. “It is unlikely, considering that they have never been our friend or Orlais’s - but we won’t know until we try.”

Dawn light filled the carriage she took home. Solas was awake and waiting in their living room - he likely hadn’t slept. Ashara was by his side, though by the scarf wound around her hair and the mug in her hands, she had only just awoken.

“Is there anything we can do to help?” Solas asked at once, his voice soft, concerned.

Ellana let herself smile at them. Their twin noses, their freckles, their blue eyes.

“I’m just happy to see you both. To be home. I don’t think the two of you can solve any of the problems we spent all night discussing.”

Ashara sat up straighter.

“I was talking to Papae - I want to help. We’ll all need to do our part. Every elf here in Enasan. Every person. And - I don’t want to go back to arcane warrior training. I know that now. But there are many other positions in an army. Attaches, aides de camp -” Ashara paused abruptly, her brow knitting. “Isn’t it strange how so many words in Trade actually come from Orlesian?”

“Orlais is the biggest empire in modern Thedas,” Ellana said.  _ And we are at war with them. Like Shartan and his rebels against the Imperium. And they had the help of Andraste and her forces. Or so the story goes. _ “And he is right. There are many roles that would not see combat.”

Ashara nodded once, decisively. “Then I’ll go out today and seek one out. I can help with - scouting, or managing an officer’s affairs and letters, or maybe some limited healing, or - something. But I can help.”

Now Ellana could not help but smile again, despite the ache in her head, the knots in her stomach. Ashara had not spoken with such resolve, such hope, since she came back from Clermont.

“Yes, you can. You have so many talents to offer, my girl.”

Ashara smiled a small smile of her own, and looked down at her mug. “I - I did not feel well this morning. I was so heavy. So sad. But I made myself get up. And I made a list of all the things I am good at. It helped. It gave me the idea.”

Solas put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “Good, da’vhenan. I am happy to hear it.”

Ellana embraced Ashara - held on just a moment longer past the point when her daughter wanted to draw away - and then she went to their bedroom. She’d been out of her ceremonial armor and prosthetic for hours, thankfully, but still her back and shoulders ached as she began undressing herself. Then Solas’s hands were on her waist, his body warm and solid behind hers.

“Let me.”

There was no overture of sex in his touches. Just a deep, unending tenderness as he undressed her, as he wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her hair, and left his lips pressed there, and tightened his embrace. She leaned back and let him hold her, and closed her eyes, and willed all the voices inside her mind away. There was just this. Just them. This was what she was fighting for. This quiet little house. This family. It would be worth it in the end, this war. It had to be.

*

Ashara had not left the house much since her return from training, other than to travel with her parents to Clermont. She feared she would see someone she knew - or someone who knew her shame. Her failure. But that could not go on forever. Not now that the war was official. Not now that she could perfectly envision that glowing ball of light in her hands, the warmth of her own kindness in the Fade. Not when she had decided she was going to keep on living, that she was going to be alright, whatever the voices in her mind said.

And, of course, on her way to the series of building that housed Enasan’s government officials, she ran into Haleir.

“Ashara! Ashara! Here!”

He was standing on top of a table outside a tavern. Her face hot with embarrassment, she drew on just enough magic to dart to his side.

“What?” she demanded.

“No need to be so snippy,” Haleir said, sitting down at his chair and picking up the tankard before him, taking a long swig. Ashara could smell the whiskey and beer in the air now that she was close to him. “I was excited to see you. No one knew where you went. Well - we knew where you  _ went _ , but we were shocked you hadn’t come back. I heard that Eshne said you could retake the test.”

Ashara dug her fingernails into her palms. She needed to cut them short again. Something else she’d neglected over the last few weeks.

“I decided not to.”

“Yes but - why?” Another swig.

“Are you - drunk? It isn’t even midday!”

“No,” Haleir said with a roll of his eyes. “I have recently finished being drunk. I have been here since last night.”

“I see,” Ashara said. She was filled with growing irritation - at him, at herself for bothering to stop and talk to him, at herself for not passing the test when she could see by the bladeless hilt on the table in front of him that he had. “You should not leave that lying about so carelessly.”

“True,” he said. “But we are all under orders to carry our blade with us wherever we go. Even in taverns. Even on leave.”

There was a special bitterness in the words  _ on leave _ . Ashara noticed that even as she felt like she could not quite focus on her own body, even as she felt herself grinding her teeth, even as she felt exhausted after sleeping through the whole night.

“So if you aren’t retaking the test, what are you going to do? Now that the war is official, I mean,” he went on.

“I am going to seek a more administrative post. I want to help as much as I can. But I don’t think I should be a soldier.” Why was she answering him at all? She owed him nothing. Yes, he had been one of her comrades-in-arms, and Eshne and her lieutenants had done their best to forge the bonds of companionship that were so essential in an army during their training. But all of that was over. One more failure.

_ No _ , she corrected herself at once.  _ I tried. I tried and discovered that it wasn’t for me. That is not a failure. _

Haleir eyed her, looking as if he did not believe her. Then he drained the last of his drink and stood in one fluid motion, picking up his sword as he went.

“Well then, I am willing to bet that our paths are aligned. I need to report back in to Eshne in any case, and she would not be a bad starting point for your plan.”

He wasn’t wrong. Ashara had not reached out to Eshne at all. She wasn’t sure if either of her parents had, but in any case, she should see her. Apologize. Say that she had been a good teacher - only Ashara hadn’t been a good student.

_ No _ , she corrected herself again.  _ I did my best. I am a good student. I am intelligent, and worthy _ -

“If you think so hard, you are going to give yourself a headache,” Haleir said. He was watching her, still with that disbelieving and confused look on his face from before.

“Very funny,” she replied as they began to walk away from the tavern and towards the towering building across the street. “So you were on leave? Did you go home to your family?”

Haleir was silent a moment. He looked down at the cobblestone path beneath their feet, rather than at her.

“I intended to. But they were not very interested in seeing me. My eldest sister came here for a couple of days though. She at least is proud of me.”

Now it was Ashara’s turn to look at him in disbelief. They hadn’t known each other with any level of closeness during their training - not really. There wasn’t time for long personal conversations. But he always projected such confidence. And to have such a large family (how many siblings was it, again?) and yet to be rejected by them… why?

“I am sorry to hear that.”

“Why? It isn’t your fault. It is, in fact, completely my own.” He glanced at her, then went on. “They had such high expectations when I got into the university here. Their firstborn child in this new world, off to study the applications of ancient Elvhen magic to new problems in this Veiled world. I disappointed them soundly. I am surprised your father didn’t want you to pursue the same, actually.”

They were nearing the front door of the building. Ashara felt her stomach knot at the thought of going in. She would be rejected. She would.

“I considered it,” she said. “But there were - family issues at the time. And once they were resolved, I realized I wanted to get out into the world, not spend years locked up in libraries. I wanted to help people.”

“Hence Vir’anor,” Haleir said.

They’d entered the building, and now they were standing in its stone foyer. Attendants rushed in and out of the doors on either side of the room. They were rushing around carrying out the business of war. A war that began that day in Clermont. If she had not joined Vir’anor - if she had not reacted with violence that day - if she had helped Velriel talk the man down instead of staring at those damned painted flowers -

“Yes. Hence Vir’anor.”

Her voice went quiet. Haleir stared at her once more, and then gave her a small, sad smile.

“Chin up, little one. The night is not so long - and I have endured it, too.”

As always, it startled her to hear his Elvhen - so similar to her father’s. Even her own Elvhen tended to lapse in and out of the older and newer forms. He was so given to using those old sayings, too. What night had he endured? What had he done to lose the love of his family? Now was not the time for any of that. She only nodded, and thanked him in the language they shared, and walked with him towards the suite of rooms where Abelas and the rest of the army’s officers worked.

Haleir disappeared quickly after that. He had only to salute to Eshne and declare that he had returned from leave, evidently, before he was shuffled off to some other room to hear his latest orders. No doubt they were all in a frantic state, getting ready to deploy, trying to determine where the Orlesians would strike first. Ashara’s mind drifted back to the classroom lessons they endured every day about military history and tactics, trying to predict for herself what the first moves of the war would be.

“Are you ready for the test, then, little one?” Eshne asked without preamble, as if she had expected her.

“No, ma’am. I came to thank you for the opportunity to take the test again, and to say that I will not be taking that opportunity. I want to serve my people in this time of need - but not that way.”

Eshne studied her carefully, nodding to herself. “I see. I can understand that. Do you know what you wish to do instead?”

“I had thought I could be an assistant of sorts, perhaps to an officer or a unit. Something along the lines of what I did for the Way Home. Placing wards alongside the scouts, limited healing, research - whatever needs doing.”

“I see,” Eshne said. “It is strange - in the last war I fought, such things were easy to coordinate. We had spirits, and more magic, and even more eluvians. But I could certainly use an intelligent and capable young woman like you to help me. My lieutenants will be given commands of their own soon in any case.”

Ashara felt the first flutter of hope in her chest. “Truly? That is - I would be honored, ma’am.”

Eshne shook her head. Her eyes were full of affection. “Wait around then, soldier. I am sure someone has invented some kind of paperwork for this. Another thing we did not have quite so much of in the last war.”

So she would be a soldier after all.

It made sense. Anyone who served with the army  _ was _ a soldier, and if she had not already passed the tests for basic combat, she would have been sent off to training now anyway. But as she walked home that evening, brimming with news, already required to return the next morning and report for duty, the word still felt foreign. Ashara Lavellan. Daughter, friend, mage, Dreamer - soldier. Both her parents had been soldiers, in one way or another. So had all of her so-called aunts and uncles. What kind of soldier would she be?

“I’ll see you tomorrow then,” Haleir called after her. He was somewhat behind her, heading in the direction of the fort and his barracks, no doubt. “Unless I see you tonight in the Fade. Although you ignored me last time.”

That gave Ashara pause. She had to think back, and carefully. When had he - oh. When she was with Cole, perhaps? She vaguely remembered hearing a call that she did not recognize and pushing it away, fearing that it could be some harmful spirit.

“Apologies,” she said. “It won’t happen again.”

Haleir only waved, and walked off into the darkness.

Mamae and Papae were pleased, although Mamae still looked exhausted more than anything else. Papae assured her that Eshne was a good leader, and that she would learn much from her, even if she did not want to be an arcane warrior any longer. Ashara stopped by the study before bed and took out two volumes on the Orlesian language and one on the history of the Orlesian occupation of Ferelden, and then she put her hair in a high bun and tied a scarf around it to protect it while she slept, and then she opened her bedroom window and sat there in the clean night air and took what felt like her first deep breath in weeks. One that filled her lungs all the way and cleared some of the tightness in her chest. She was not naive enough to think everything within her was fixed now. Not by a long shot. But it was something.

*

The first Orlesian attack came, unsurprisingly, near the Frostback Mountains. They had anticipated that. The Frostback Mountains were an important source of ore for Enasan, and they were on good terms with the Avvar of the Frostback Basin and with Ferelden beyond it. If Orlais could cut off the ore and the hope of aid, they would strike a decisive first blow. Ashara heard all of this in the many meetings she now attended at Eshne’s side. Meetings which her mother was frequently present at, or even presiding over. That was strange. Seeing Mamae as a warrior and a leader, as she had only seen her in memories preserved by the Fade.

So when the report from their scouts on the eastern border came, announcing signs of an impending Orlesian assault, they were ready. The paths in the Crossroads connecting them from the capital to the outskirts were cleared, and they were able to march swiftly through, arriving at a forward camp that Abelas had already ordered created in order to defend the area. It was a bit of a thrilling sight, Ashara had to admit. The bright pennants and the beat of the drums, the rattle of armor and weapons. She had her own armor - a robe of royale sea silk and a hauberk of stormheart over it, emblazoned with the three trees of Enasan, as well as gauntlets and greaves. All of it was light, and maneuverable, and she felt safe in it, but Mamae saw it and pursed her lips.

“I wish we had been able to stockpile more bloodstone from Emprise du Lion before all this started,” she murmured. “It absorbs impact so well. I always made sure to use it when requisitioning armor for my companions in the Inquisition.”

“I’ll be safe, Mamae,” she said quietly. It even felt strange to call her Mamae, now. In public, she wasn’t supposed to. But they were alone when they had that conversation, tucked away in the small office Mamae used when she wanted to work undisturbed.

“No one in war is safe, Ashara.” Her mother’s voice was unexpectedly harsh. But she knew the words were true.

Still, she was not expected to fight - at least not on the front lines. She was to act as one of the many lines of communication between the various commanders, whether in battle or not, and to leap into action only if necessary. She drilled with other non-specialized mages in the mornings in order to prepare for that, continuing to hone her combat skills. The muscles she’d lost when sadness swallowed her were coming back. She needed them the day that the Orlesians struck near the mountains.

They were prepared, but what followed was such chaos that Ashara shuddered to think what it would have looked like if they were not prepared. They’d set up camp in a narrow pass in the foothills of the Frostbacks - the point of easiest access to their supply line from their mines in the mountains. The only other way was through the thick forest of the former Arbor Wilds, which was still largely as wild as its old name implied. The good news was that they had the high ground on the southern part of the pass, a place for their archers and for mages like Ashara to launch attacks down below. The bad news was that the Orlesians led with a charge of magically shielded chevaliers on horseback.

Even from her vantage high on one of the ridges that formed the pass, Ashara could hear the screech of metal on metal as the chevaliers crashed into the front line of elven warriors, the shriek of their horses, the screams of the dying men. The scent of the pass went from cool mountain air to sweat and blood quickly. Everything was fast - the dying, the arrows, the shouting, the spells, the parries and ripostes. She kept the archers at her side shielded behind barriers and rejuvenated with waves of energy from the Fade, watched for any sign from one of the other aides de camp signaling her from the other ridge, kept an eye on any potential calamities that she might need to call out to Eshne, who was down the ridge from her a little ways calling out orders. 

She knew she was supposed to watch for a sign that their lines were about to collapse, that the Orlesians were mounting some kind of secret attack (flanking was not truly possible in the pass, but she was to watch for that too). She was to listen for Eshne’s shout if she needed her to carry a message or do anything else. But it all felt - surreal. Like a dream she had no control over. This was not happening. She was not watching elven mages lob fire into the ranks of Orlesian soldiers, or elven warriors struck down by chevaliers with their incongruous yellow feathers, or seeing the sudden flare of one of the arcane warriors causing a deadly explosion of stored energy. The air crackled with magic and fear and so much was happening that Ashara became numb to it, numb to anything outside the exact present moment - her white-knuckled grip on her staff, and the twang of the bowmen beside her.

Their lines held firm. The cavalry charge did a blow but it was not a large number of chevaliers - only twenty or so - and after that initial sortie, they were quickly slain by the arcane warriors. Ashara was surprised not to see any of Orlais’ knight-enchanters countering them. It was one of the things they’d studied during training. How to fight against someone who shared your skills. They had far more mages on their side in general, and that turned the tide - the overwhelming magic pounding its way into the Orlesian forces. Ashara did not add to that fray, even though there was fire in her veins, lightning coiled in her stomach, ready to burst from her staff. She had no orders to. She would not kill unless she had to.

It was over in less than an hour. The cavalry fell, and then so did many of the heavily armored warriors who came after with their tower shields and longswords, and then the distant commanders sounded their retreat. They did not pursue. That felt - wrong, somehow. Some animal instinct in Ashara said they should give chase, take down their prey. But the leaders had already discussed this. They did not want to be lured into a trap or give up their superior position. They wanted to send the message that they would defend their land, but not go on the attack unless they had to. It was a victory, then. They had stood against Orlesians soldiers and survived. Ashara had seen her first battle. The twisting, churning mass of steel and blood and hair and death.

“That was a much smaller force than I expected,” Abelas said at once when the leaders convened that evening.

“I agree. Twenty chevaliers isn’t even a test - it’s a formality. And they were far from the best trained chevaliers I have seen,” Mamae said. She had been even further back than Ashara herself, watching through field glasses.

“The whole thing was a test,” Caralina agreed. “To see if we could anticipate them, perhaps. To see how good our scouts are. To see what kind of force we would send against them.”

“I am surprised they did not send templars,” Taegan said. He was in command of the warriors who had taken the brunt of the assault, and had been directly on the field. He stunk of waste and sword oil. “That’s what I would have done. They know we have mages.”

Mamae nodded slowly. “There are not so many templars in the world as you might think. Corypheus all but wiped the Order out at Therinfal Redoubt decades ago, and red lyrium took much of the rest. What Cassandra - what the Divine has rebuilt has been a very different kind of templar order. Much smaller. And they are firmly under her control.”

“I am sure Villiers has asked for them. Perhaps the Divine has not granted his request,” Caralina added.

“Or they simply do not want to tip their hand.”

Neither Eshne nor Ashara spoke in the proceedings. They listened, and Ashara took notes for Eshne on the decisions made by the end of the meeting. The main leadership would return to the capital at dawn, but the field commanders and troops would remain. They did not want to risk the Orlesians sensing a retreat and launching a second attack. It was likely that a significant number of the warriors, scouts, and archers would remain indefinitely, now that they knew for certain that the Orlesians had targeted this site. Eshne and her arcane warriors were special - it was likely that they would be recalled once there were signs of another attack. The eluvians were perhaps the biggest advantage they had over Orlais. They could redeploy troops at a speed the humans could only dream of, especially smaller units like the arcane warriors. And as that first battle had proved, they were enough to turn the tide.

“Ashara - come sit.”

It was Haleir, of course, who called her over to the campfire where he and his fellow arcane warriors sat when Ashara exited the tent. Eshne gave her permission to go before she even reacted.

“Go on. I am perfectly capable of reading your notes on my own. You can sleep in your mother’s tent tonight if you like, instead of mine. Who knows when you will see her again after tomorrow.”

So Ashara went and joined them - them being Haleir, Tayana, and Catriona, the three mages who’d been with her on that failed attempt to gather spirit essence. So all three of them had passed. Of course they had. They had been able to gather enough spirit essence for all four them, while she had been occupied being useless.

_ Not useless. You weren’t useless. You were a good target for those demons, and you were overwhelmed. _ It was hard to be gentle to herself, sometimes.

“So, we all survived,” Haleir said, raising a wooden mug high above his head and then draining it.

“Are you drinking even here?” Ashara asked dubiously.

“He wishes,” Tayana snorted. She’d shaved her hair almost to the scalp, the way Mamae used to wear hers during the Inquisition. No more multitude of beautiful braids. Ashara had taken her braids out, too. She wondered if Tayana’s mothers, the seers from Rivain, had joined the army, or if they were too old. She thought the same of Catriona’s, the mages from Kinloch Hold. She wondered if the tenuous bonds they’d built during their training were still there. What they’d said about her after she was gone.

“Alas, it is only water. They don’t give us alcohol with our rations. I’m sure Catriona knows how to make whiskey and beer, though. Don’t all Fereldans?”

“I’ve never even been to Ferelden,” Catriona retorted. She’d lost the nervous edge she had before, during training, and in its place was a sort of bitter edge. Like all the fear had hardened into something sharper, but no less brittle.

“I am happy you’re all safe,” Ashara said.

“I’d drink to that,” Tayana said. “Being out there, in the fray - actually using what we learned - it was -”

“It was something,” Haleir said, with a forced breeziness. His jaw was tight.

“It was frightening,” Catriona said. She curled in around herself. “But we need to do this. Orlais can’t win. It’s not just what they’d do to us for being elves. I bet they want the Circles back the way they were. I’ve heard my parents’ stories. I don’t want that. So I have to do this. I have to.”

Ashara wasn’t sure what to say. She didn’t want to say that she found it frightening too - not when she’d been all the way up on the ridge, and they’d all been down in the thick of things. She didn’t want to just repeat what Catriona said. Why was she so hesitant? She’d never been so hesitant around others before. She was just tired. That was all.

“Well, that’s enough depressing talk. I am ready for a round of cards, if everyone else is. Is this enough for Wicked Grace? I can never remember,” Haleir said, reaching for his pack.

“Please, lethallin,” Tayana snorted. “You’ll cheat no matter what we play, and I don’t have much money left. I wouldn’t mind seeing you play Diamondback with Ashara, though. She might actually give you a run for your money. She’s the smart sort.”

Ashara was pleased at that. She didn’t think she’d seemed particularly smart in front of Tayana before, and Tayana herself was no slouch. Not as well versed in history and theory as Ashara herself was, but canny in a way that she knew she did not possess.

“Perhaps,” Ashara said, glancing over her shoulder, towards her mother’s tent. There was no light. She either had not gone to her tent yet, or she had already gone to sleep. Either way, there didn't seem to be harm in her staying here.

“He does cheat,” Catriona said, unfurling from herself, seeming more at ease.

“On my honor, I will not. Not with a pretty girl like you.” He winked at Ashara - such an absurd gesture that it startled a laugh from her.

“Are you saying I'm not pretty?” Tayana said, shoving Haleir as he produced cards from his pack and shuffled them.

“Oh, I didn't cheat with you either. Or Catriona. Or with Elluin. He's the prettiest out of all of you, you know.”

“Liar.”

“On which count? He  _ is _ prettier than all of you. I'll never understand people who don't appreciate beauty everywhere they look. Male, female - the gender hardly matters. Your hand, my dear.”

For a split second, Ashara thought he was asking to hold her hand. Then she saw the cards he held out. She shook her head, trying to clear it. Earlier today she'd watched men and women die in bouts of blood, in dazzling and horrifying displays of arcane power. Now she sat playing cards. One of the people before her could have died today. She could have died.

Haleir was, in fact, an expert card player. It did not help that while Ashara knew Diamondback, and played it with her parents, she had never outgrown the habit of letting everything she felt and thought show on her face. Haleir didn't even have to cheat (he still did - Catriona caught him with an extra card up his sleeve). It was a pleasant time. Ashara eased into it, felt more like her old self - chatty, affable. She laughed at their jokes. She tried to ignore the occasional shouts and sobs that pierced the night. People dying and people in mourning for those who were already gone.

“How did you get so good at cards, anyway? I don't think there are classes in gambling at the university.”

Haleir had been absent-mindedly shuffling the cards as they talked. He stopped.

“Ah. The same place I learned all of my entropic spells. A very, very pretty man who broke my heart. But it is late, and I am not drunk enough to tell that story. Ladies, good night.”

With that, he was gone. Tayana and Catriona said their good nights, too, and Ashara made her way to her mother's tent. She was already asleep, and there were two cots, but as Ashara removed her armor and put it on the armor stand in the corner, she realized she wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed at her mother's side. She didn't care if it was foolish or childish. Eshne was right. Who knew when she would see her mother again? And though their casualties had not been severe, there were still people crying and alone that night. Mothers whose arms would be empty forever, and children who would never see one of their parents again.

Her mother stirred only briefly when Ashara pulled their cots together and managed to work herself close. She just let out a long breath and took Ashara's hand and squeezed it tight. 

In the morning, they were not near each other. They both woke to the clarion call of trumpets, the stirrings of a camp at war. Mamae sat up at once, yawned, checked that her weapons were at her side, looked immediately to her own armor stand. This was not foreign to her, Ashara realized. This was ordinary for her - or had been. They didn't talk much as they got ready. Before Mamae left, they embraced, and she cupped Ashara's cheek and spoke in a fervent whisper:

“Be safe, da’asha.”

She was the one who said no one was safe in war. But she had spoken as a general then. Now she spoke as a mother.

The core leadership left before the call for breakfast was done. Ashara returned to Eshne's side, smiled and waved at Haleir and Tayana and Catriona and the other soldiers she recognized from training. She got ready to go on with the business of war.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, I am so excited that we are finally seeing more of Haleir. You have no idea.
> 
> Thank you as always for reading! Prompts, comments, and general discussion more than welcome here or on my [Tumblr](https://buttsonthebeach.tumblr.com/)!


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew - I know this chapter took me a month, but I hope it was worth the wait!
> 
> There are canon-typical violence and descriptions of war in this chapter, but nothing that is any more graphic than previous parts of the fic.
> 
> There is also a sex scene that begins in the section marked ** and ends at the section marked ***. It can be easily skipped :)

So much of war was the  _ waiting _ , Ashara learned.

She was tense after the first battle, eternally ready to spring into action, startled by small sounds in camp. On the day after the battle, she cleaned her armor twice and then reattuned her staff, though neither activity was particularly necessary. She accompanied Eshne when she drilled the arcane warriors. They had twenty of them now, all new recruits who had trained within the last two years, about half of which came from Ashara's own class. Two had been wounded in the battle, but they were recovering well. They all mirrored her same tense unease.

“We will remain here at least one more day, and then it is likely that we will be recalled. Or, we could be recalled today. Or it could be a week. Take what rest you can for the rest of the day, and do not leave the camp. If you need something, see Lavellan or myself.”

Ashara hovered when Eshne left, hoping and fearing that someone would need her, but no one did. Instead they drifted away to their tents, or to other parts of the camp, until she was left with only Haleir.

“I have a request, Lavellan,” he said.

“Oh?”

“Yes. I want one hundred shortbread biscuits covered in icing, and hot chocolate from Seheron.”

“Ah, yes. I will get on that straight away.” She deflated as he spoke, and let her sarcastic annoyance show through in her words.

“Excellent. Care for another round of Diamondback?”

Ashara looked around them, at the pennants and tents and worn down grass, the towering mountains to their east and their caps of snow. They were at war, and they were going to play cards.

“Sure,” she said.

They weren't recalled from the mountain pass for nearly a week, and that was how most days went. Ashara drilled with nonspecialized mages, or attended the arcane warrior's drills at Eshne's side. Eshne tasked her with any necessary reports or correspondence, which was generally done before the noon meal was served. Their food was simple, with much of their meat and vegetables coming from the surrounding countryside. Once that was done, there was nothing to do but wait. Waiting involved sitting and talking (Ashara learned that Tayana was an only child, while Catriona had a younger brother who was also a mage, and studying at the university in the capital) or playing cards (Ashara remained bad at both Diamondback and Wicked Grace, but she had good fun with both), or continuing to train on their own. All of the mages in the camp tended to gravitate together, like mages anywhere, to discuss magic and exchange spells and show off their tricks. It was how Ashara first saw the entropic magic Haleir had mentioned during their first Diamondback game. She knew the theories behind such spells, of course, but she'd rarely seen them practiced. They were considered too dangerous for young mages.

She could see why, watching Haleir hex the blackbirds that wandered near them while they sat at the edge of camp. The way the magic crossed the Veil - slow and almost imperceptible and smelling like ash - made her skin crawl. It was eerie to see the blackbirds drop in sudden, unnatural sleep. It was horrifying when he sent one a nightmare, and it shrieked and twitched and lashed the ground with its tiny wings.

“Stop!” she'd shouted, quickly dispelling the magic, her heart pounding. Haleir's face was like stone, his eyes still fixed on the bird, which was still now. “You didn't have to demonstrate that one,” she said.

“Sorry,” he muttered, though he still didn't meet her eyes.

She asked him again where he learned such magic the next day. He shook his head again.

“I told you. I'm not drunk enough to talk about Rafe.”

“Ah, so he has a name?”

“Of course he does.”

Haleir was given to such moods, Ashara noted. He could be jubilant, snappish, and silent in one day. She found it a bit exhausting. But there was so much waiting to be done, and only so much room at camp, and so she found herself gravitating to whatever small group he had formed around himself.

For all that she enjoyed Haleir's company (when he wasn't in a mood) and Tayana's and Catriona's and even Eshne's, she found that she missed Claudia and Lucius terribly. She’d taken for granted how easily she fell in with both of them, how natural their bond had been. What was it about them? Claudia’s wry and blunt humor paired with Lucius's calm gentleness? The way they both grounded her? She had been so frantic, so hopeful, so determined when she met them. Maybe that was why she missed them. Maybe she missed who she was when she met them.

One night she decided to test the theory. She reached out, found them both asleep, both in inconsequential dreams, and she gently pulled them both to herself. She formed the streets of Val Chevin around them, put pastries in their hands, and remembered those days when she was flush with certainty that they would save Mamae with their newly made orb, and her heart was just beginning to flutter at the sight of Lucius. It was there that they kissed for the first time, in the hallway of Sera and Dagna's house. There that he confessed that he would rather lie to his new patron then put her at risk.

“Hello,” Claudia said, unfazed once she saw Ashara. Her voice was quiet and her brown eyes kind. “It's good to see you.”

Lucius seemed more disoriented. He looked at Ashara and then at Claudia and then at the scenery surrounding them - and then at Ashara again.

“It's me,” she said, reaching out and touching his elbow, sending a pulse of mana his way so he could recognize her aura.

“Oh,” he said, surprised. “I see.”

She wondered why that confused him. She dropped her hand from his elbow.

“How are you?” Claudia asked. “With - everything.”

Everything.

She had not told them of the depth of her despair, of going back to Clermont, of joining the army after all, of her daily struggle to avoid sliding back into that despair. And yet Claudia knew at once. Maybe it was a silly thing to build up. It was probably easy to guess. She still wound her arm through Claudia's, and relaxed into that contact.

“Can I have a bite of your croissant?” Ashara asked.

Claudia sputtered. “Are you serious?  _ You _ created this dream.  _ You _ imagined this croissant for me. And now you are asking for a bite when you could just imagine one for yourself?”

Lucius laughed, and held out a piece of his own croissant. “And here I was, already preparing to offer you some. I didn't even think of that. I just knew you would want it.”

She remembered the taste of the pastries they ate in Val Chevin perfectly, and she summoned that taste to mind now. Buttery, crisp, flaky.

“Can I have more?” she asked.

“Lucius, do  _ not _ give her more. She is being ridiculous.”

“Claudia is right. You could just imagine your own.” And yet he tore off another piece and handed it to her. She wanted to reach up and brush away the crumbs catching at the corners of his mouth.

They walked for a while like that, talking of nothing in particular. Then Claudia redirected them once more.

“But really, Ash. How are you?”

“I'm fine,” she said. “I'm better, now that I've had some time with the two of you. We're at war. I'm in the army, but not fighting actively. It's all very strange.”

She said it as if they didn't already know and instantly felt stupid. But neither of them reacted with disdain.

“I can only imagine,” Lucius said. “I pray every day that this new emperor of theirs backs down. There has to be a peaceful solution. And I hate the way this war is making people act, even up here in Tevinter.”

“How is it making people act?”

“Anti-elven sentiment,” Claudia said. “The Lucerni had to vote down yet another measure that would harshly restrict elven rights. Impose elf specific curfews, make it illegal for them to own knives of a certain length… that sort of horrible nonsense. Thank the Maker it failed.”

“Tell me if they try and start such nonsense again. I'll speak against it. Bas and Gaius were worried they wouldn't be able to come in early enough to get the forge started if it went into effect. If the magisters won't listen to decency, maybe they'll listen to business interests.”

Ashara frowned. “Business interests? And who are Bas and Gaius?”

“Ah - I hired them to work with the blacksmith who is making pieces for my printing press. He's started trusting them with more responsibility now, which is excellent.”

“That is excellent. They aren't doing the enchanting, are they?”

“No - I have to send the pieces to Kal-Sharok for that. But I wanted to have some control over their creation, so I wanted them made here in Minrathous where I could personally assist and supervise…”

As it usually did when he discussed his research, Lucius's face and voice and manner took on a quiet intensity that seemed to make him glow. In those moments Ashara could hardly remember the suspicious mage who saw no point in playing with magic, in trying new things just to try them. The man who had shut himself down to survive in a society that ground the weak and unwary beneath their heel, that celebrated ambition and deceit and abhorred softness. She found herself smiling at the sight of him, talking and gesturing and pushing his hair out of his face.

“I am sure Rhea is very proud,” she said when he was done, keeping the smile on her face.

His face grew reserved again. “Rhea and I have parted ways, actually.”

“Oh - I am sorry,” Ashara said. Claudia murmured something to the same effect.

“Don't be. We were just very different people.”

He didn't sound hurt, or seem hurt. He gave her a close-lipped smile. Ashara shut down every thought that threatened to run through her head on the subject of relationships being over, and how different two people had to be for things to fall apart, and how she wanted to see his face light up again.

“Who were you with in the Fade last night? Your parents? I sensed you, and I sensed two other mages, but I didn't want to intrude,” Haleir asked her the next morning, after they drilled. He seemed to be making an effort to be on good behavior around her since the incident with the bird.

“No. Only my father is a mage. It was two of my friends from Tevinter, actually.”

Haleir's eyebrows went up. He turned to Tayana, who was just joining them. “Do you hear that? Lavellan gets fancier by the minute. She has friends in Tevinter.”

“Oh, fancy indeed. No wonder she's too good to be a common soldier like the rest of us,” Tayana grinned, leaning against Haleir.

Ashara's face grew hot. “I'm the same rank as all of you.”

Tayana rolled her eyes. “Learn to take a joke.”

Haleir laughed. Ashara missed Lucius and Claudia more and more. She thought of the country they came from. Of how that country still,  _ still  _ tried to keep her people down. Of how she was in an elven army fighting a human one, and yet she missed her human friends.

*

Two weeks after the first battle of the war, after reading report after report of skirmishes all along the border from west to east, they were called to a different part of the border. To the dead center of it, due north of the capital. To a battle the elves of Enasan were already losing.

The call to move out came in the middle of the night from a runner sent by Abelas. Ashara woke first, passed the message to Eshne as she put on her armor, and then she put out the call to the tents containing the other arcane warriors.

“Armed and armored in two minutes. We are called for.”

They warped the Fade to get to the eluvian as fast as they could, Eshne sending out rejuvenating waves of energy to keep their mana up as they Fade stepped. It was a silent affair. The soldiers guarding the eluvian let them through with no question. The crossroads had been closed to most civilian traffic in order to move troops more quickly, so it was eerily quiet there too.

It was not quiet when they exited the Crossroads. Not at all.

The Orlesian army was there in force, already cracking the front lines of the elven troops like a wedge driven in with a hammer. They were folding in on themselves, failing to hold this section of the road leading in to the capital. Ashara only learned the exact  _ wheres _ and  _ hows _ of that later, though. When they arrived, all she heard was screaming, dying, the twang of bows and the crackle of magic.

“Find the nearest field commander and bring me a report,” Eshne said.

Ashara was off. No time to think. Just to wrap the Fade around herself and tunnel through as quickly as she could, the pattern of a barrier already wavering around herself as she darted through the ranks of soldiers to the first tall, gold-trimmed banner she saw.

“Reinforce the line,” the commander shouted. “Tell the arcane warriors to reinforce the front of the line. They can’t break through. They can’t.”

“How many Orlesians are here?” Ashara said.

“Too many. They keep coming. We are outnumbered.”

It was a vague answer. Ashara needed to know the number of units, what kind they were, if the Orlesians had brought mages or templars at last, but she didn’t think that as she darted away from the field commander. She only thought of how she was at least half a mile from the front lines and yet she could still hear them dying. Could still hear things snap and wonder if they were bone or wood.

She knew she had been on this road before - it was the main one leading into and out of the capital, after all - had walked past these tall trees probably a hundred times. But she felt like she’d entered the Fade as she darted around the archers and mages and back towards Eshne and the arcane warriors. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. They weren’t failing to hold back the Orlesians from the road that led straight to her home. It was impossible.

She let the momentum of her Fade step carry her up one of the trees that lined the dusty, cobbled road. She clung there just long enough to look out over the lines of battle, to see the curve of the elven forces and how it was caving in under the pressure of the Orlesian ones. They stretched like a sea. Back and back and back. Shimmering silver and gold. Horses - at least two units of them, probably chevaliers. Her gloves bit hard into the bark. She wobbled and stayed steady. She looked for flames or ice or electricity or arcane shields - anything that would indicate the presence of mages. She saw nothing.

“Very well then,” Eshne said when Ashara scrambled back down the tree and delivered her report. “To the front.”

The arcane warriors went forward in brilliant flares of light as they slipped in and out of the Fade, incorporeal enough that they could dart directly through the lines of the elven forces, storing energy. Storing it and storing it until they reached the heat of the battle and let it go. The explosion was beautiful and deadly, even from where Ashara stood with Eshne. Violet flares and flashes of green and bodies flung high. Screaming.

“Now, forward. Tell them,” Eshne snapped. Her hand was tight on the hilt of her bladeless sword.

The field commander had already given the order by the time Ashara reached him, sending his own mages closer to support the arcane warriors, directly his warriors who fought with sword and shield to close ranks and repair their line, to begin pushing the Orlesians back. Ashara ran back and forth from one commander to Eshne to another, to other runners who intercepted her. She felt the heat of flaming arrows and heard the fighting but none of it was near her. She could almost pretend none of it was real. Until she saw more brilliant flashes of light coming from the front of the lines and remembered.  _ Haleir. Catriona. Tayana. Those are my friends up there. And any one of them could be dead. _

They won the day, if it could be called a victory. The Orlesians withdrew to their camp, which had been spotted only a couple of miles distant from the border. Enasan’s forces had lost nearly two hundred lives. Once again, their superior mages and use of the Crossroads had won the day for them. But they were already outnumbered, and the two hundred elves they lost that day was a frightening number. The Orlesians had people to spare. They did not. Two hundred. It was just a number, Ashara tried to tell herself. Until Haleir and Tayana came back from those front lines, and Catriona did not.

“I tried - ” Tayana began when she saw Ashara and Eshne. She never finished the sentence.

Ashara went to her. Damn the fact that they were meant to debrief, that a soldier had to be strong in the face of loss. It didn’t matter that Ashara did not know Catriona or even Tayana as well as she knew Claudia or Lucius. It didn’t matter that Catriona was only one among the two hundred who died that day. They’d lost someone. Ashara held Tayana close as she wept.

“Debrief in five,” Eshne said, voice tight. “Dry your tears.”

*

They met late into the night. The Orlesians had no plans of withdrawing. They were well entrenched in their camp up the road, just over the border. They’d lost twice the soldiers that the elven forces did, but that didn’t matter. There were reports of skirmishes along other parts of the border, of other Orlesian camps, but the bulk of their forces did seem to be here. Some field commanders wanted to call in more troops from the eastern and western divisions of the army. Some feared that the Orlesians were maintaining multiple camps precisely because they hoped to harass the elven forces into consolidating. The Crossroads made them maneuverable, but they were outmanned, and if they consolidated too much, the Orlesians might close ranks and swallow them whole.

A message came from Mamae, who was in the capital.  _ Hold the line _ , it said.  _ Recall a small number of troops from the eastern and western divisions. Keep it equal. _

Ashara saw her mother that night when she slept. Her father, too. They all embraced. Tried to talk about normal things.

“Our favorite bakery closed,”  Mamae said. “I don’t know what I’ll do without his sticky buns every morning.”

They did not speak of the likely reasons that it had closed. The family had fled Enasan for Ferelden. That was happening, apparently. Or perhaps the baker had joined the army. Perhaps she was already dead.

“I will check in every night,” Ashara swore. “Even if it is just a small song for you, Papae. I will speak to the spirits if I cannot sense you.”

Her father hugged her tight. Kissed her forehead the way he used to when she was a child. “Stay safe, da’vhenan,” he said.

It was all they could say to each other. Over, and over, and over again.  _ Stay safe _ . Ashara woke, and remembered the sounds and smells of the dying.

Haleir was up when she left her tent. He stared pensively into the fire.

Ashara sat silent at his side for a moment. She felt exhausted, and yet she didn't want to sleep. Something could happen at any moment. Anything could happen at any moment. She still felt disoriented by the speed of the battle, how they went from the camp in the mountain pass to a forest she should have known and yet felt alienated by. How Catriona was there at breakfast and even now they were preserving her body and preparing to take it home to her parents and her brother.

Haleir was silent at her side while those thoughts swirled around in her mind. Finally she had to speak, if only to feel like something was real and still.

"I'm surprised you haven't tried to requisition any whiskey," she said.

Haleir snorted. "Would it work this time?"

"Maybe," Ashara said. Who knew how things worked anymore? She kept hearing that cracking sound. Bones or trees or both. It didn't sound like Gwynne's neck breaking, but maybe all bones didn't break the same way. "I don't know."

The last words slipped out like tiny stones. Haleir met her eyes.

"I could hear the Orlesians chanting today. I understand just enough of their language to know what they said. They chanted about how the only good rabbit is a dead rabbit. How they'd impale us on our own knife ears. I can't believe - I can't believe people actually think that way. I was always angry with my parents for raising us in such isolation out there in the woods. But maybe..."

He had a stick in his hands. He threw it in the fire. Instead of blazing up higher, it sputtered and began to die.

"Yeah," Ashara said, thinking of her own small home, how it used to be on the outskirts of the city before it grew, how her parents wanted her to grow up away from the hustle and bustle and the limelight of their fame. "At least we won though. Right?"

Haleir shook his head, stood, and walked away. Shame coiled hot and fierce around Ashara's throat.

She was in the Fade later that night, her sleep so fitful that even that place was nauseating, too fast and too slow, when she sensed Haleir again. She'd been searching for Lucius, longing for just the brush of his sleeping mind against hers, but her connection wasn't deep enough to search so far. She turned to Haleir instead, letting his presence fill her mind. He was more a feeling than anything else - a chaotic buzzing against her aura, no image or sound. Perhaps his connection was strained too.

"I'm sorry for walking away earlier," he said. Trees the color of blood filled her vision. "That was unkind. I hope we did win."

"Me too," she said.

*

Ashara woke the next morning - though she had never really slept - and went about her day. She went to the morning report with Eshne - the scouts had gotten into a scuffle with Orlesian scouts overnight, and superior elven eyesight had won the battle for them - there was no movement from the Orlesian troops yet - they wanted the arcane warriors to stay, given their success in the battle the day before - orders had been passed down to build fortifications along the road behind them in case they had to fall back again, but they needed to hold the line for at least three days if they wanted them to be in decent shape -

Ashara took notes of it all, gulping down a lukewarm cup of tea as she did. She didn't feel much like eating. Then she left, following Eshne back to her tent. There was no drill that morning, and a line outside the healers' tents that stretched on and on. Many of them had minor wounds, or needed to be seen again. Many of them just wanted a wave of soothing, rejuvenating energy. There was a row of neat pine boxes by the tent, too. Some empty. Some full.

"Rest," Eshne said when they reached her tent. "You'll need it."

Ashara wandered over to a group of arcane warriors she knew, Tayana among them. They were talking about food.

“So we agree then - constantly forcing food on your children is just an elven mother thing. Doesn’t matter where your parents were originally from,” one warrior said.

“Yes. Now imagine having  _ two _ mothers,” Tayana snorted. “Ah, Ashara. Does your mother also fret constantly that you aren’t eating enough?”

“Oh, of course. She doesn’t even mind when I steal food from her plate. Well, usually. Do your mothers still fuss over your hair constantly? Whether or not you’ve conditioned the curls recently?”

“Yes, but I think that’s more a Rivaini thing than an elven thing.”

The conversation went on, the group of them talking about mothers and fathers and whether or not it was all elven parents that did this or that, or just all parents, until the Orlesians attacked.

It started with shrill screaming from the front of the camp and the slice of sharpened daggers through skin. Rogues - bards more likely. A sinister hum ran through their ranks, an intimidating, inhuman sound. They ran swift and silent through the camp with poison-coated daggers.

“To arms!” Someone shouted.

Ashara had her staff on her back, but not her armor. That didn’t matter. They were coming closer, two men darting straight for the group of arcane warriors, two women behind them with arrows nocked. Every hair stood up on her body as she opened her connection to the Fade and the elves surrounding her did the same. She wrapped a barrier around them, felt them open their Fade shrouds.

“I don’t have my blade,” one swore, hysterical.

“Go,” Tayana shouted. “I’ll cover you.”

The one who bolted - Ashara never did catch who it was - died flaming, full of arrows.

Ashara summoned a gout of flame to her own hands and directed it at the men as they approached. The flames licked over and around their armor - but they did not catch fire. Some sort of protective coating or substance. Closer now. Ashara strengthened her barrier and reached into the Fade for ice instead, cold and uncaring, but her blood ran so hot with fear, it was difficult to find that feeling, and when she did they were nearly on her and the ice flowed wild over their armor instead of catching their feet and rooting them like she intended. She spun the way they practiced in drills every morning, lashing out with her staff, slicing at one man’s armor with the blade on the end of her staff. Lightning instead of ice or fire, she would shock him as Tayana ran forward and sliced at the other with her shimmering spirit blade.

_ Blood. His blood. You know you could use that. _

Falon’Din’s voice, hers - Ashara didn’t have time to question where the thought came from. She’d escaped the man’s initial attack and now another of the arcane warriors was fighting him but arrows still rained down on them from the archers, and more Orlesians were penetrating the camp, and there was terror everywhere. A memory rose - attacking the blood of her enemies directly ( _ his  _ enemies), paralyzing them, hurting them, letting other soldiers swoop in for the kill.

Tayana shrieked in pain somewhere nearby. Horns sounded. Ashara cast out her senses in the direction of the archers, felt the hum of their blood in their veins - and sent fire into them. Blood wound, the spell was called. She remembered that distantly as she saw them drop their bows, twitching, spasming, paralyzed from the inside out.

“We need to fall back and form up.” Eshne’s voice. Haleir was at her side. “Now. Ashara, grab whatever you can from my tent and yours and then return. Everyone else get your armor and rations. Haleir and I will hold them. Avoid Haleir’s spell.  _ Go! _ ”

Haleir was already deep in concentration, the sickly sweet smell of decay rising in the air around him. He’d already spread out glyphs in front of himself and Eshne - hexes, traps - and now he was summoning death itself from beyond the Veil.

Ashara ran. Everyone ran. The camp was chaos. Each time they fought Ashara thought she knew the meaning of that word and each time she was wrong. Ashara got into Eshne’s tent and seized maps, letters, spare weapons, the vials of lyrium kept in a locked box. She bolted into her tent and threw on her armor, some distant corner of her mind impressed by her own speed. The image of the two archers spasming and twitching, their blood burning in their veins from her spell. She shut away the energy that the blood magic brought to her own body. Hopefully it was a quick enough spell - a weak enough spell - that it wouldn’t damage her connection to the Fade for long. It didn’t matter. They just had to survive.

The miasma of death Haleir had summoned was only just fading as Ashara returned. There were similar clouds hanging all over the camp now. All of the other mages with training in entropy were following suit, no doubt. Ashara saw lightning storms and blizzards and storms of fire, too. Trees burning. The mages doing everything they could to create an impenetrable wall of danger and death to stop the press of the Orlesian forces. But they were there, just beyond that line of magic, their armor gleaming in the sun, their horses stamping, their blades bare.

“Come,” Eshne barked. “Now.”

They fell back and something like order resumed. Units found each other. Soldiers struggled into the last pieces of missing armor. Already exhausted mages drank their vials of lyrium. Healers tended to the people they could save. Ashara darted back and forth, back and forth, Fade step as natural as breathing to her now, checking in with commanders. Entire units had been lost. Crucial supplies left behind. They were about a mile away from camp now, with a walled town called Shalasan about ten miles behind them. Someone needed to send runners to warn them. But who? Their scouts were dead or scattered. Someone else would need to go to Shalasan and through the eluvians to warn the commanders and to seek reinforcements -

_ “Hold the line!” _

The Orlesians were charging, chevaliers on horseback followed by soldiers with gleaming tower shields pressing forward, forward, forward. Their line was weak. Ashara could see the soldiers’ faces. There were hardly any mages with this unit, and only a scattering of archers. She reacted. She filled herself up with fire, built it and built it, and then unleashed it with a crack of force into the onslaught. The fireball exploded outwards, scattering men and women left and right, burning hair and skin and melting metal.

“Again,” the field commander at her side snapped, assuming control of her as if she were just another soldier.

She was. She was just another soldier.

Ashara felt herself reach the dregs of her mana after she unleashed the second fireball. She fumbled for the pouch at her waist, uncorked the vial of lyrium there with shaking hands, and drained it. It hit her at once, a sweet, singing tide of energy. The two fireballs had killed or greatly weakened the Orlesians directly ahead of them. Ashara cast barriers over the soldiers fighting to dispatch the rest.

“We can’t advance,” the field commander at her side said. What was her name? Why couldn’t Ashara remember? “We have to hold this line. There are so many of them.”

The commander was right. Ashara looked out at the road and woods stretching ahead of them and she saw a sea of gleaming metal. The Orlesians in force. This was not a skirmish. This was a direct, sustained attack. An attempt to break the elven army’s spine and head straight for the capital.

Another aide de camp appeared with a rush of wind, his steps magically speeded as Ashara’s had been.

“The plan,” he gasped, trying to catch his breath. Blood streamed from a cut on his forehead. “We have a plan. Hold them here. Gather the mages. More are coming through the Crossroads. Lay down another line of area spells, all along the front lines of our army. Archers provide suppressing fire as well. Make every single inch of ground they take hurt them until they can’t take it anymore.”

“Good. Go.”

“I need to report back to Eshne -” Ashara began.

“Stay,” the field commander snapped. “My mages are all dead. You’re all I have.”

The other aide de camp had said that they would hurt the Orlesians for every inch of ground they took. And they did. But the Orlesians still took many, many inches of ground. Another two miles, it would turn out, before the day was over. The mages blistered the earth with fire and hardened it with frost and filled the air with death and crackling storms of electricity and still the Orlesians kept coming, not because they were not dying, but because they had so many soldiers left to sacrifice.

It was Eshne, Abelas, and a handful of other Elvhen who finally held them.

It was a dazzling display of power - or it would have been, if it hadn’t been blinding. Before Ashara’s vision flashed white she saw Eshne unleashing a deadly blast of stored energy that flared out, out, out, further than she’d ever seen any other arcane warrior’s detonation. After that she knew there was lightning by the crackle in her ears - and then there was a strange silence.

When she opened her eyes and looked towards the front lines again, the world was distorted. It was like looking through thick, twisted glass, or an egg white. It shimmered now and then with arcane energy. Ashara probed it, found hints of paralysis, physical slowing and the slowing of time - but fundamentally it was a barrier. A massive barrier extending as far as her senses could reach, dividing the two armies.

It nearly killed Belraj, the Elvhen mage who cast it. Abelas carried them back, laid them in the healers’ tent, and Ashara heard later that the word  _ uthenera _ was on all of their lips.

Ashara found that that was how her mind worked as she sat by the campfire. It jumped from moment to moment, sensation to sensation. She felt hollowed out, but not quite in the same way as when despair overtook her in the previous weeks. She just couldn’t make sense of things. Couldn’t relax. She probed inward, searching. She was herself. She was awake. This wasn’t the Fade. It wasn’t a nightmare. She was sealed inside a magic barrier the likes of which she had never seen, surrounded by an army of other elves, wondering when the barrier would fall, when the Orlesians would strike again.

“Before Belraj slipped into unconsciousness, they said the barrier should hold through the night,” Eshne said when she gathered the arcane warriors to her. “Commander Lavellan has agreed to pull the arcane warrior units from the other divisions of the army. They’ll be here soon. Sleep while you can.”

Sleep?

How could they sleep?

Ashara lay on her bedroll near the fire, looking up at stars she knew, in a forest she knew, on a road she knew, and yet she felt utterly adrift. She tried to think of anything but how naked she felt without her armor, anything but how naturally the blood magic came to her when the battle started. She tried to think of her mother not as Commander Lavellan but as Mamae, warm and soft and smelling of soap. She tried to think of the sound of Dorian and Bull’s voices, the long thoughtful breath Papae would let out through his nose when he and Bull played chess. She tried to recall her favorite passages from  _ The Tale of the Champion _ , the names of the streets in Minrathous - and perhaps it was that last that led her to sleep, and into Lucius’s dream.

He was dreaming of a bookshop in Minrathous, a little dusty thing tucked in at the end of a busy street. He was tracing the spines of the books, his lips moving soundlessly, hairs falling loose from his loose plait and drifting across his face. She wanted to go up behind him and bury her face against his back and hold him tight.

“Lucius,” she called, quietly, resolving that if he did not turn, she would not call again.

He turned.

“Ash - I am happy to see you. I hear - I hear there have been several battles. I was worried.”

Ashara looked around the bookstore to avoid the sight of his face. The thought of the life he was living worlds away, where there was no war. She could wake at any moment to her death.

“It’s not good,” she said finally, staring at the row of books above his head, wondering why they were all copies of the  _ Spiritorium Etherealis.  _ “I’m afraid.”

Her words were quiet again. Her eyes jumped to the next row of books. She felt him move closer, felt the Fade shift around his aura.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I wish there was something I could do.”

The next row of books was all copies of  _ Hard in Hightown, _ which Lucius had tried once at her insistence and hated. Where were the spirits of the Fade getting these titles from? Lucius’s hand brushed hers and then she had to look at him.

“Tell me what’s happening. What’s going wrong. I’m no soldier but - maybe I can help you talk it out, or think of a strategy, or there’s something I could tell Claudia or Dorian or Maevaris.”

Ashara curled her hand into a fist to stop herself from taking his. He was right. He was no soldier. She was now. She thought of all she’d seen and heard and felt of war and she did not want to wish a single instant of it on him.

“It’s - it’s enough that you’re here.”

Lucius made a confused huff that was almost a laugh. “But  _ you’re _ here. You came to me. I didn’t do anything. And I know you have been hurting, and I know I can’t begin to understand all the ways you have been hurting - but you can talk to me. Let me at least - try to help.”

His fingers started to curl around her fist, a soft, searching touch she couldn’t allow. She felt a sharp tug in the pit of her gut. Someone was waking her anyway. She could be waking to her death. Terror filled her at that thought, turned all the bookshelves to ice.

“Ash -” he started again. Another sharp tug in her gut, and the heaviness of her real body began to settle in.

She took his hand and squeezed it tight.

“Thank you, Lucius,” she said. “For wanting to try.”

Haleir’s face was the one she saw when she woke, and not someone bent on killing her. His lips were set in a firm line and he looked as tired as she felt.

“You were hard to wake. Must have been a good dream.”

Ashara looked at the stars and took in the sound of metal scraping on metal, the clatter of armor, the swift footsteps of runners and aides. The bookstore in Minrathous seemed as impossible as standing on one of the moons in the sky. The pressure of Lucius’s hand in hers, though, was real as the earth beneath her back.

“It was. It was with someone good.”

Haleir studied her, appraising. “You’ll have to tell me about them someday.”

Ashara sat up and looked around. Haleir seemed relaxed. A quick check assured her that the barrier was still in place, and the elven army was still in a loose, haphazard camp to rest and reset. Warriors were digging trenches. Blacksmiths were sharpening blades. She flexed her hand - the one that had held Lucius’s in the Fade.

“Maybe I will. On the day you tell me about Rafe.”

Haleir laughed mirthlessly. “Sure thing. Tell you what - help me survive these murderous shems and get me a bottle of whiskey, and I will.”

“Deal,” Ashara said, and her own smile was wan.

*

The addition of two more units of arcane warriors under the command of Eshne’s lieutenants helped their cause, but it wasn’t enough.

When Belraj’s barrier fell, the Orlesian army charged, and they lost ground.

Again, and again, and again.

The sheer mass of them, these humans who chanted about rabbits and knife ears as they cut them down - they were going to break under it.

Ashara was run ragged, literally and figuratively. She drank more lyrium than she ever had before in her life, enough that she could taste it on her tongue no matter how much water she drank. Her legs burned from carrying her from commander to commander. Her back ached from swinging her staff, fighting off soldiers who broke through their ranks, or from sending showers of flame down upon the troops still trying to break through. She killed several more Orlesians. Five, if she wasn’t mistaken. She wasn’t counting the ones she killed or maimed at a distance.

_ I am defending myself and my home _ , she said, in the moments when she had space enough to think.  _ Sometimes compassion is a knife in the dark _ .

Mamae was with the army, but Ashara only ever saw her at quick glances on that day. There was too much terror and death, too many repetitions of  _ fall back, fall back _ for it to even matter that her mother was there.

At some point on that long, awful day, Orlesian mages arrived. Just a small band of them. They did not wear Circle robes or any kind of Circle insignia, or even anything related to the Chantry, one scout managed to report breathlessly. They were likely free mages who had joined the Orlesian army willingly or unwillingly. That part didn’t matter. Eshne directed the warriors there, and they slaughtered them. One small victory in the midst of a hundred tiny defeats. The earth surrounding the main road was churned to mud, and even the main road was getting torn up under the fury of their feet.

They fell back all the way to the town of Shalasan. The western division of the army met them there. They’d bought them enough time that day to make fortifications, to set ambushes. They slipped into the protective embrace of Shalasan’s walls, and stood there on the nearly-empty streets while the jaws of the western division snapped shut around the Orlesians.

It wasn’t even over at that point. Of course they tried to send strike teams in through a hundred different avenues. Of course they sent flaming arrows arcing through the air to land on the wooden houses, creating fires that they had to move quickly to douse. But eventually, the Orlesians withdrew to lick their wounds. Ashara was standing by one such house that she had just helped Haleir preserve from flames when the call sounded.  _ Rest and recover. Regroup. _ She let out a long breath, and put her staff away with shaking hands.

Haleir reappeared from inside the house, which he’d confirmed was empty, the residents having heeded the evacuation order. Some civilians had stayed, of course. Ashara wondered how many more would flee now that the Orlesians were upon them. Haleir had a bottle of amber liquid in his hand.

“Shall we rest and recover?” he asked. He was covered in gore. In the heat of battle - she’d been at his side for the better part of the evening, as their retreat turned into a mad dash with little form or sense - she hadn’t cared. Now as she returned to her body, noticed the dirt and ash and blood covering her own armor, she felt sick.

“Let’s change and check in. Then - yes. Rest and recover.”

They met back at the empty house after cleaning their armor and checking with Eshne. The plan was to hold Shalasan as long as possible, and to let the western division take the brunt of that pain, while the leadership debated. They were free for the night, barring any catastrophes. She and Haleir went around to the back of the house and leaned against it, passing the bottle between them. It was cheap whiskey. It made her cough and sputter at first, which made Haleir laugh.

“I forgot what rarified company I keep. I should have gotten you something fancier, tar’lan.”

“Shut up and pass it back.”

She should have been mad that he took it from this home, however empty it was. But she couldn’t summon the energy to care.  _ We’re losing _ , she kept thinking.  _ We’re losing this war. _

Ashara looked around the house. Saw their neatly folded clothes sitting on their couch, and the childrens' hand-drawn pictures lining the walls. They were sitting inside someone else's life, drinking someone else's whiskey. But she imagined fleeing her home with Mamae and Papae, and returning to find that the soldiers who defended that home did nothing more than have a rest and a drink, and she found she didn't care.

Then again, maybe that was the whiskey curling warm and smoky through her veins.

"Today was awful," Haleir said, cradling the bottle by its neck.

"Yes," Ashara said. "Tomorrow is probably going to be awful too."

"Well, then here's to many more awful days." He took a long swig, then held the bottle out to her. Ashara accepted it, but decided not to accept his words. Not all the way. She'd been down the path paved by words like that, and not so long ago. She could still feel her despair lurking in the corners of her mind. She half-feared that if they did repel the Orlesians, if they did catch a break, it would pounce on her, and drag her down again.

"Yes. And to the good days that will follow."

"Optimistic, are you? You must not be drunk enough yet for blubbering."

"Well, are you drunk enough yet to talk about Rafe?"

Haleir let out a long, slow breath, and reached for the bottle of whiskey.

“My parents - fuck, I can't believe I'm starting a story about the man I love with my parents. What does that say?”

“I don't know. The story about the man I love starts with my mother.” Ashara settled in, tried to let her body relax, tried to force her mind to focus on something other than danger and death.

“Oh-hoh. So you have a story too. Mine first. Anyway - pass the whiskey - my parents always expected so much from me. And feared so much for me, I think. Their first baby in this new world. They lost two children in Fen'Harel's war, you know. Twin girls. Very young. It shattered them. Sylaise permitted them uthenera to dull their grief. And then they woke to an alien world.”

Ashara thought back to how alien the world felt to her now. To her father’s descriptions of his awakening. She took another drink. Tried to pretend it wasn’t her father’s war that cost Haleir’s parents two children.

“Anyway, time goes on, the same man whose war cost them their daughters helps found a country. They go there. And they have me. And they pin every hope they ever had on me. And they have six more children and they still expect me to be - everything. To justify their loss and their sorrow and their confusion. And out there in the wilderness - pass the whiskey again - I could manage it. Mostly. I wasn't always the kindest older brother. I wasn't very patient with the littlest ones. But the real trouble started when I came to the city for university.”

Haleir’s voice, now that he’d gotten going, was melodic. Assured. This was a story he knew well, and thought about often. The whiskey made Ashara cough a little. Soreness was settling into her muscles now that the day was done. She wondered how she would be able to stand, or if they would just sleep here, in someone else’s house.

“I was finally free,” he went on. “No parents. No little siblings. A whole city for my amusement. I'd never seen a city in person, you know. Only in the Fade. There was so much to see and do - and my parents didn't have so much money, and I ran through it too quickly, and I couldn't go home in shame. And I'd been hanging around bars and taverns and that was where I met Rafe. This tall, smiling, gold-haired man with his Fereldan accent and his seemingly bottomless pockets. He - said he could help me make money, too. Trafficking lyrium, and the like. He taught me how to disable people without killing them so we could steal from incoming shipments of the lyrium. That’s where the entropy magic came in. I told myself that that made us moral. That we didn’t kill people.”

Ashara wanted to ask him who he’d been selling it to, if he ever stopped to consider the dangers lyrium posed to society at large. They didn’t keep as tight a lid on it in Enasan as other countries did - they had their own contracts with Orzammar, and did not need to rely on the Chantry’s, and it was possible to obtain small amounts of lyrium for personal use. There were hefty punishments for stockpiling and selling the stuff outside of official channels, because of the risk of addiction or the use of large amounts of lyrium in dangerous rituals. Haleir and this Rafe had been contributing to that threat. But Ashara didn’t say that. It wasn’t her place.

“And in the midst of that you fell in love?” she asked instead.

“Yes,” he replied. “Like an idiot.”

Ashara wondered if love made everyone feel like an idiot.

“I stopped going to my classes,” he went on. “I ignored my mother’s attempts to reach out to me in the Fade. Rafe became my whole world, and I followed him wherever he led me. It was like - like he had this glow, and as long as I was with him I could bathe in it. He was witty and clever and he could make me feel like I was the only man in all of Thedas who mattered to him.”

“But?”

“But.”

Haleir set down the bottle. He raked a hand through his brown hair, which was a stringy, oily mess around his face. She doubted she looked any better. She hadn’t looked in a mirror in at least a week.

“After a month of no contact, my eldest sister came to the capital. She managed to find me at Rafe’s. Along with a crate of lyrium we’d stolen the night before. She was furious, but she said she would pretend none of it happened as long as I came straight home with her. I refused. I didn’t want to go back to all that pressure, all that responsibility. I didn’t want to leave Rafe. So she went to the authorities.”

Ashara’s stomach sank.

“Rafe fought back when they came for us. One of the guards drained his mana, and another hit him in the head and he was - he was just so weak and helpless, lying there. There was blood in his hair. And I - reacted. I lashed out with my magic. I nearly killed two of the guards.”

“That’s terrible,” Ashara said, as though they both hadn’t killed people that day.

“It was.” Haleir’s voice was quiet. He took a long drink from the whiskey. “They sent me to prison, of course. Two years.”

“And Rafe?”

Haleir shook his head. “When he was questioned, he claimed I had masterminded all of the crimes we committed. That he was afraid of my ‘violent temper.’ I haven’t seen him since that moment, lying on the floor with blood in his hair. I haven’t seen my parents since then either. No one came to visit me in the time that I was in prison. No one.”

“I can’t imagine that,” Ashara said quietly. If she ever ended up jail somehow she knew her mother would be there. Shouting at her, but she’d be there. Haleir shrugged, his eyes downcast. Ashara bumped her shoulder gently against his, resting just a little weight against him so he would know he could rest his weight on her in turn.

“So that’s why I’m here. Killing Orlesians and hoping that eventually I’ll kill enough of them to make my parents forgive me for the shame I brought them. The promises I didn’t live up to.”

It was her turn now. Ashara took another drink.

"You may know this," Ashara said, trying to think of where it began. What steps first led her to Lucius. How many steps away was he now? Her mind was fuzzy with whiskey, her limbs light and heavy all at once. She almost died today. She could die tomorrow. She hoped Lucius was warm and safe. She'd waited too long. She needed to start again. "You may know this, but my mother was ill a couple of years ago. Very ill. Dying. So I went to Tevinter to try and find a cure and I had the library book that this boy - this man needed."

"I see. A handsome man, I take it?"

"Yes. Very."

"Describe him for me."

Ashara summoned Lucius to her mind's eye, and it filled her with warmth and sadness and too many things to articulate when her tongue was slow with drink. "He has black hair, and he always forgets to go to a barber to have it cut, and it starts to curl more and more the longer he lets it grow. He has dark brown eyes. So warm and soft. And he's tall."

"Excellent. He sounds like my type, too. Now, get to the sad part."

Ashara didn't want to get to the sad part. She wanted to linger, forever, on the image of Lucius in her mind, smiling at her, his eyes crinkling with the force of his joy.

"He helped me find a cure for my mother. He helped me even when it was dangerous, when I was stupid, when I was full of despair. He helped me even when helping me meant putting his own future in Tevinter in danger."

Haleir snorted. "What elf has a future in Tevinter?"

"Oh - he's human. A Laetan mage. Laetan meaning his parents weren't mages, and they weren't upper class like Altuses but they weren't poor -"

"No, no, no, back. Go back. He's human?"

"Yes."

He laughed. "Oh, I'm sure your parents loved that. My mother was furious when my younger sister flirted with a human girl. I told her I found qunari men and women quite striking once and I swear her face turned white as bone."

Ashara sighed. "Yes. My father was not very pleased."

"Is that where the sad part comes in?"

"No," Ashara said slowly. Her mind slid from the image of Lucius smiling to the image of him on the day he told her it was over. She held her hand out for the bottle and he passed it, though it took a bit of coordination from both of them. Coordination was sort of a funny word. "No it - it was all me. I was - so excited about - everything. The whole world. Everything in it. I wanted to travel and help people and experience new things all the time. And he - he just couldn't imagine leaving Tevinter. And he decided to end it, before we both hurt each other."

Haleir was silent so long that Ashara began to fear he'd passed out. But he was just looking up at the ceiling of the house, his head tilted back against the wall.

"That isn't your fault. It isn't his, either."

"I guess."

Tipsiness had gone over into nausea. When had she eaten last? She told herself it was that, and not the thought of Lucius, and how things ended, and how she felt whenever she was with him. Haleir sighed. His voice went quiet.

“So we both have men that haunt our dreams, I suppose. I wonder which hurts worse. To lose a man who was terrible for you, and still miss him now that he is gone. Or to lose one who was wonderful, and realize you shouldn’t have let him go.”

Something unstuck behind Ashara’s ribs. She was going to be sick. She lurched to her feet and stumbled out of the house, leaning against the wall by the door. Outside the air smelled of smoke and death, a raw, unrelenting smell. She retched a little, but her stomach held.

_ You shouldn’t have let him go. _

Haleir’s words, not hers. But still. Still.

Distantly she heard the sounds of a scuffle, two elves fighting, a superior officer intervening. Her head swam.  _ I shouldn’t have let him go. _

Ashara took a deep breath. It was a useless thought. A drunk thought. There was a war to fight. She would move along. She went back inside the house to find Haleir snoring lightly, his mouth open, the bottle of whiskey spilled at his side.

“Come on, lethallin,” she sighed, helping him to his feet despite the unsteadiness in her own body. “We need our rest.”

*

The next day, the Orlesians had their mages start burning the forest.

The good news was that they still did not seem to be Circle mages. They did not wear the Circle’s robes, and their training and tactics were not as precise as they would have expected.

But mages were mages, and as the arcane warriors proved again and again, even a small group could make a difference.

Their warriors used magebane on their weapons and their archers followed suit, and the arcane warriors protected groups of mages who were experienced in mana clashes and mana drains, trying to neutralize the threat. But the Orlesians were smarter than that, and their mages were heavily protected, out of reach of the spell’s range, and difficult to reach even with the warriors. The archers had some success. All day, Ashara ran back and forth with these sorts of messages. They were holding the town, at least.

For three days, that was the pattern.

More and more mages arrived, and the forest burned despite their best efforts to stop it, and the Orlesians started to encircle Shalasan as the trees gave way. Sometimes Ashara would stand on the wall of the town and look out and see the absolute sea of Orlesian soldiers, and their tents and camps in the distance, and her throat would close up. There was no end to them. There were  _ more _ in other parts of Enasan.

They were going to lose.

“We need a decisive push,” Abelas said at the end of that third day. “We must hold here. Commander Lavellan has agreed to my plan to pull all but the most essential mages from the other divisions of the army and bring them here. We will make them remember what sets the People apart - our connection to the deepest energies of this world.”

He launched into a discussion of the strategy - how the mages would form a wedge, hidden within the ranks of the rest of their forces, and move forward as one, guarded on all sides by warriors. How they would be organized - arcane warriors first, behind them a unit that specialized in entropic magic, who would disperse weakness and misdirection and paralysis through the ranks of Orlesians, and behind them mages specialized in various schools of ranged magic. That wedge of mages would pierce the Orlesian line and rain death upon them.

“We must be careful of the effect this may have on the Veil,” Arlanal, the council’s arcane specialist, said. She had come for this meeting for precisely such considerations. There was a special tone in her voice, though. A significance that Ashara did not miss, even if it took her a moment to parse it.

The further the Orlesians pushed into Enasan, the closer they drew to the parts of the country where the Veil had been weakened. By her parents. By the very orb that awoke Falon’Din’s spirit.

Yet another fact she tried constantly to suppress. That she had begged her parents to undo what they had begun when she learned of it. And they had quietly ignored her plea, even if they never spoke of it.

“Yes, they will all be briefed on that possibility. Rift mages will do what they can to reinforce the Veil as we go. We will also warn them that their spells will be more powerful as the Veil weakens - a blessing and a curse.”

“Sometimes I wonder if we shouldn’t just let the Veil tear and rain demons down on them,” Eshne muttered at Ashara’s side.

Abelas narrowed his eyes. “You know as well as I do the chaos that that would cause for our forces. And the image it would present to the rest of Thedas.”

“Ah, yes,” Eshne said dryly. “Our image.”

Now Arlanal’s eyes were narrow. “Ambassador Tabris and Commander Lavellan aren’t here to speak to this, but I will pass on that things are in a precarious position with countries like Ferelden. Such an action would be very detrimental.”

Eshne waved her hand dismissively. “I understand. I only think of how many more of my warriors will die for the sake of politics.”

Abelas shook his head. “You are old enough to know that this is the way of war, Eshne. Such things have not changed in this Veiled world.”

Eshne sighed, and though she was as ageless as other Elvhen, Ashara suddenly saw the weight of her thousands of years in her eyes. 

“I know,” Eshne said. “I know.”

*

The strategy with the mages worked, until it didn’t.

The first push was a fantastic show. Orlesian soldiers crumpled like dead grass under the onslaught. Ashara hated the visceral thrill it gave her to see it happen.  _ Yes. Good. _ She wasn’t doing the killing, but the primal part of her still took joy in seeing them fall back, the same terror she’d felt now gleaming in their eyes.

(Later her own joy would make her sick to her stomach, but that was later, and not in the heat of battle.)

They regained ground on all sides of Shalasan after that first push. They even managed to take out a large portion of the Orlesian mages, forcing the Orlesian generals to recall the others for their safety. That night there were celebrations, loud and drunken ones, among the elves. Haleir was in fine form. He ended up standing on top of a table waving a foaming mug of beer over his head.

“Death to Orlais! Triumph to the People! And more ale for all!”

Ashara had to pull him down and take the beer from him.

“You’re embarrassing yourself,” she said, even though there was mirth in her voice.

“Who fucking cares,” he said, leaning his head against her shoulder. Then, more softly. “Rafe would like this. This kind of celebration. The kind that comes after danger.”

Ashara rested her head against his. It was nice to be touched like this. She touched many people each day, one way or another - but not gently. Not companionably. Underneath the terror and exhaustion she was lonely, she realized. Lonely even though she spent all day, every day, surrounded by people.

“You shouldn’t miss him if he was so awful to you,” Ashara said.

Haleir shrugged as best he could. “He was sweet, too. He used to hold my face in his hands and just look at me. Like I was the only thing in the world he wanted to see.”

Ashara thought of her mother and father and the looks they shared - of Dorian and Bull - of Thom Rainier and Josephine, and Sera and Dagna. Of Lucius, and the way he used to look at her.

“I know what you mean,” she said finally. “I miss that feeling, too.”

The next day, their strategy with the mages did not work, because Orlais’ templars had arrived at last.

They arrived in force, the sword of mercy blazing on their chest, and they broke through Enasan’s ranks, and they pushed and pushed until they were fighting on the streets of Shalasan.

Even Ashara could not escape the killing then. Not if she wanted to live. The first moment when she saw the templars break through far enough that she could see their eyes through their visors, she was filled with a surge of terror. She was back on the streets of Clermont. That awful smite was coming, that breath-sucking, weakening, wave of invisible force - powerlessness was coming, and with it, death -

She killed the first templar with a spear of ice through his visor. The second was ready for her, shield angled down to direct the gout of flame Ashara blasted at her down, towards the ground. She surged forward, sword raised, and Ashara put all her power into the forward part of her barrier, ready to absorb the blow and to seek an opening - but at the last instant the templar’s sword swung wildly to one side, missing her entirely. Ashara looked down and saw the purple glow of a misdirection hex beneath the templar’s feet. Another quick glance, as she drove the blade on the end of her staff into a weak joint on the armor, confirmed that it was Haleir who’d cast it. But if Haleir was here, then had the arcane warriors scattered, fallen back - ?

She gasped as she felt something hook into her mana and pull - not a full smite but a drain. Another templar. She took the small of vial of lyrium at her side with practiced ease and swirled her staff around her, building, building, and then unleashing a crackle of electricity that made the templar’s limbs jerk like a doll’s.

“Back,” Haleir shouted at her. Three other haggard, bloodsoaked mages were with him. “Keep falling back.”

They did fall back, further into the town, where buildings were burning and people were screaming. Ashara didn’t know where she was running. She’d lost track of Eshne. She had no orders. She didn’t even know if Haleir was following orders. She just wanted to live.

“Up the wall,” Tayana said. “We need to see where we can help.”

Tayana was right. They found the nearest entrance to the ramparts that ran along the wall and ran up it, all of them panting, and looked down on the chaos below.

Once again it was a sea of Orlesians and a smaller shore of elves, and those Orlesians were breaking and breaking and breaking on that shore, whittling it down, down, down. Pockets of mages still sent up brilliant flashes of power, knocking back waves, but they were isolated, no longer in their protective wedge. The Orlesians had regained all the ground around the city and were pushing inward.

“Shit,” Tayana said. “Shit, shit,  _ shit _ .”

“What do we do?” the mage beside her asked in a high, panicked voice.

Ashara looked around. None of them had the answer. There was no superior office here. No one to help. What would her mother have said or done, in a situation like this?

“We fight,” Ashara said. “We fight until we can’t anymore.”

Haleir nodded. “To the front of the walls. We’ll pick off the Orlesians who are breaking through. Try and put out the fires they’ve started.”

They ran as a group to the front, dodging the few remaining civilians who were fleeing along the walls, and they did just that. It was a small thing, like a bird beating its wings against a hurricane, but it was something. Each soldier who fell was one less who would try to hurt them, try to kill them, try to take back the only home most of them had ever known. They were not helpless. They could at least do this much.

Ashara was dimly aware of the problem Arlanal had mentioned - the weakening Veil, buckling and rippling under the pressure of so many frantic mages, so much death. She could hear the spirits over the din of battle, if she tried hard enough. When she sent stonefists hurtling towards the soldiers that Tayana petrified, shattering them, they came easily across the Veil, with little effort on her part.

Then Eshne unleashed a staggering blast of energy that lit up the night sky, and Ashara nearly felt the Veil tear in half under its weight.

Even at their distance, her blast of energy was so bright, so strong, that it lit up the world around them as if it was day. It shimmered with a dozen hues, sizzled so loudly that Ashara could hear it, and annihilated everything in a circle around her. It was taller than the trees, wider than the road - hundreds and hundreds of feet of primal arcane energy.

Ashara felt the Veil sway, struggle, rip in places like an old dress splitting along its seams. She reached out frantically to stabilize it, sending threads of energy to stitch everything back. Exhausted as she was, it was easy. The weakness of the Veil created a perfect feedback loop, she realized in the part of her mind still capable of that thought. It fed her energy even as she sealed it closed. It was like filling her lungs for the first time all day. She’d been keeping up her practice of drawing energy and sustenance from the Fade almost out of necessity, but this was the difference between a slice of stale bread and a feast.

Tayana made an astonished sound. “Look at the two of you. How did you do that? You look - healthier, again.”

Ashara glanced at Haleir and saw what Tayana meant. He looked less haggard, and his breathing was less sharp. A flicker of magic against his aura confirmed that it felt stronger, too.

“Feeding from the Fade,” he said. “Haven’t you done that?”

Tayana frowned, but didn’t have a chance to respond before the other mage with them gestured towards the battle again.

“They’re falling back. How did that mage  _ do _ that?”

“She is Elvhen,” Haleir said. “We should get to her. Even for her, a display of power like that -”

Ashara thought of Belraj, who still was not recovered from their massive barrier.

“Yes. We should.”

**

Eshne would live, even if she was practically comatose with exhaustion. That was the good news.

The Orlesians had withdrawn for now - her blast had taken out one of their generals and a significant chunk of chevaliers - that was the other good news.

The bad news was that scouts reported more templars on the way.

The worse news was that the fact that there were any templars at all meant that the Chantry had agreed to support Villiers.

“Soon they’ll send the Circle mages, and more templars, from all over Thedas,” Ilbryn, an older mage from the Free Marches, said at their dinner that night. “And if the Chantry has made up its mind, the other shems will soon follow. And then it’s all over for us.”

Ashara tried to imagine Cassandra making that final call. She thought back to the meeting in Clermont. Aunt Cass was suspicious, yes, but she was angry at Villiers too, wasn’t she? It was all a haze now. It felt like another life.

“Well then,” Haleir said. “Time for more whiskey. Care to join me?”

“Are we becoming alcoholics, then?” Ashara asked, even as she stood and followed him.

“Why not? If Ilbryn is right, we won’t live long enough for it to matter.”

Ashara closed her eyes and took a deep breath to steady herself against the thought. But he was right. Her brain and her body were rattling, replaying the day over and over again. The templars charging for her, the ways she’d killed them. She needed something to dull that edge.

They retreated to a tent - Ashara thought vaguely that it might have been hers, at one point, but such things hadn’t mattered over the last few days. What mattered was that it was a quiet place, out of the way, where they could enjoy their pilfered whiskey.

“I think I’ve had more whiskey in this town than I have in my entire life,” Ashara said as Haleir uncorked it.

“Welcome to war, I guess.”

Ashara stripped off her armor, careless that Haleir was there. Such things had long ceased to matter, anyway. She conjured water, and wet a rag, and started wiping herself down once she was in her smalls. Her hands were shaking a little.

“It still doesn’t seem real,” she said, turning back to Haleir, who was sitting on the cot on one side of the tent. “That we’re at war. That I’m in a war.”

Haleir snorted, putting down the bottle. He stood to remove his own armor, and then reached for the rag. He was so pale.

“Well, you are. I certainly saw you handle those templars.”

“Thank you for your help there,” she said, taking his place on the cot. She thought her muscles would enjoy the reprieve, but instead she just felt fidgety. “With the hex.”

“It’s a useful one. Rafe favored it.”

Ashara bounced her foot up and down. Haleir finished wiping himself down. She thought of their earlier conversation about Rafe and Lucius, their easy comfort when she stopped him from embarrassing himself. She thought about the look in the templars’ eyes at they charged her. She thought of how she might not be so lucky tomorrow.

Ashara looked at Haleir, and felt the blood pounding in her ears, and she put the bottle of whiskey aside.

“Let’s have sex.”

Haleir’s eyebrows went up.

“Really?” he asked. His tone was surprised. Intrigued.

“Yes,” she said. There was a wildness in her. She was alive, she was alive. She was alive now and she might not be tomorrow. She wanted to be alive with him. Nothing more and nothing less.

Haleir sat down at her side, picked up the bottle, took a swig, and put it back down.

“Okay.”

He slid across the space between them, cupped his hand around the back of her skull, and kissed her.

It had been so long since Ashara kissed someone that the feeling of someone’s face against hers was pure shock. It was too hungry and too intimate all at once - and yet not enough. He tasted like the whiskey. Their teeth knocked together.

“Sorry,” Haleir said, drawing back. “Was that too much?”

“No,” she said. She kissed him again, just as hard but more briefly. Then again.

She didn’t like or dislike the kisses, she realized. They were a thing that was, like the rush of the wind against the tent, like her sore back, like the sparks that danced in her eyes after Eshne’s dazzling display of power. She kissed him again. He got closer to her, and she let him into her space, and they kept kissing. She was kissing Haleir. She was kissing someone for the first time since she kissed Lucius. She was kissing someone for the first time since Clermont. Since she became a soldier. Since the war began. She was alive and she was kissing someone.

He was on top of her now on the narrow cot, though he kept his weight off of her. She couldn’t tell if he was hard or not. She was going to see him naked, she realized with a hot shock. He would be inside of her. She wanted that. She was aroused but in a way she’d never felt before - an animal way, unconnected to any deeper feeling. She didn’t think she would sleep with anyone in that moment - not with a stranger - but she also knew, even as she dragged Haleir down onto her, and put her leg over his hip, and felt just how hard he was, that she did not love him. He was her friend. Her fellow soldier. A man she respected and liked. It was enough.

Ashara reached down and fumbled at the knot on her breastband, finally working it free. Haleir looked down at her, sweeping his eyes over her form. They glinted in the low light.

“You may need to move for me to get to my smalls,” she said. She was hot and impatient all over, and especially between her legs. She saw the outline of his arousal in his own smalls and looked quickly away, suddenly embarrassed, and yet still wet between her own legs and ready for it to be free.

“Sure.” He stood. She pulled them off, and he pulled his down, and then he was back on the camp bed and kissing her, and suddenly he pulled back.

“Wait - you aren’t a virgin, are you?”

“What? No. What made you think that? I told you about Lucius.” Ashara let her exasperation show. How had he gotten such a silly idea?

He shrugged, and gave her a half-smile. “You never said you did sleep with him. And you seem like the type.”

“To what?”

“To save it. I’ll bet you did.”

Ashara wondered if what she did counted as saving it. Throwing herself at Lucius the way she did, until they came together, degree by degree. She put the thought of him away.

“Sort of. Not really.”

He ran one of his hands up and down her side.

“Relax. It was a compliment, really. You’re serious, and thoughtful, and you feel things deeply. That’s what I meant. Can I touch you here?”

His hand was resting on her ribs, near one breast. His face was neutral. She could say no.

“I’d like it if you kissed them,” she said. Her face got hot. “All over.”

Haleir grinned again. “Duly noted.”

He slid down and went to work - kissing, teasing, and worrying with his teeth. Too rough, really, but Ashara gasped and groaned anyway, because it wasn’t bad. The need for him to be inside her, for this to move quickly, was unbearable. Her sex was already hot and tight with need, clenching around nothing.

“More?” he asked, kissing lower.

That was entirely too much. The thought of him there, so close, his mouth on her sex. She shook her head.

“You could use your fingers,” she said.

“Okay.” He came back, and then they were wrapped up in kissing each other, but eventually his hand snaked down between them and pressed on her clit and circled quickly. Too quickly, and too much pressure, but when she made a noise of distress he slacked off a little. His cock was hard and leaking against her leg.

It was good. She liked the friction and the almost-too-much feeling and the sense that she was careening off some cliff and the feeling that she was  _ alive _ . She kept her eyes closed to focus on that all the more. She got close to coming several times but each time it eluded to her, but that didn’t matter, because they were two bodies writhing together, and she’d managed to roll over and palm his cock and she liked the sounds he made, how he swore in Elvhen.

“Contraception?” he managed between kisses, his fingers still working her.

“The healers have witherstalk,” she said.

“Good. I’m clean. Never had any issues. You? Ah, fuck -” That last in response to her rubbing him up and down, faster and faster.

“I’m clean too. Ready?” she asked.

“If you are.”

She got on her hands and knees. He got behind her. She felt like nothing so much as an offering - warm, wet, aching, and alive, alive,  _ alive _ . She gasped when Haleir’s fingers entered her, as they pumped in and out, and as he slid his cock in. She stretched, burned, accepted him.

“Fuck,” he said when he’d bottomed out. She was so full, and the off-white linens filled her vision, and she wanted him to move. “Was that okay? Do you need a moment?”

“No. It feels good. Is it good for you too?”

He ran a hand up and down her back. He pumped his hips a little. He groaned.

“Oh, yes. Yes -”

It went quick from there. Her back was sore and her arms were sore but she rocked back into every stroke as he fucked her. It took her own fingers rubbing between her legs to bring her release. Sweet, lovely, and fleeting release, fluttering in her core. Haleir pulled out right as he finished, turned, and spilled onto the ground. She just caught sight of him working the last stream of it from his cock with lazy strokes of his hand, groaning quietly, as she collapsed onto her side. Her heart was pounding, but for the first time in days she felt like it would stop pounding at some point. The tension would ease. She would settle back into her skin. Haleir sat back onto the cot put a companionable hand on her thigh and she welcomed the simple touch.

“Well, that isn’t how I thought my night would go, but I can’t say I’m disappointed. You?”

“I didn’t think so either. But that was a welcome distraction.”

Anything was a welcome distraction at this point. From the war, from all the thoughts she was afraid to voice.

He squeezed her leg. “Shall I stay a while? There’s still whiskey.”

“Sure.”

They sat at opposite ends of the cot this time, and passed the bottle between them, and he left with another affectionate squeeze of her leg, and Ashara drifted off full of hazy thoughts that she couldn’t remember on waking.

***

The next morning, Ashara woke, and her first thought was of death. How long had she slept? What had happened in her sleep? Was she safe?

Her next thought was for the soreness between her legs, and Haleir.

Her next was for Lucius.

She banished all of them, stood, put on her armor, and went out.

The streets of Shalasan were quiet, or as quiet as they could be. She saw groups of soldiers everywhere. They needed to form back up. They needed orders, plans. Why hadn’t Eshne come and found her? Oh, because Eshne was likely still comatose. Her stomach dropped. What was the plan? Where was she supposed to go?

“Tayana,” Ashara called when she saw the other mage, her dark, tightly-curled hair frizzing all around her face. “What’s the plan?”

Tayana shrugged. “Everyone seems to be in a holding pattern. Leadership is off in a meeting. The Orlesians are sticking to their camp. Some people are trying to repair walls and fortifications.”

Ashara bit her lip, considering. “Do you know where the commanders are? I know Eshne won’t be there but maybe I should be? I need to know who to report to now, in any case.”

Tayana shrugged. Her eyes were hollow. “Suit yourself, Lavellan.”

Ashara reached out to touch Tayana. “Are you alright?”

Tayana snorted derisively. “Are you?”

Ashara dropped her hand.

“I think they’re in the tavern in the center of town. They’ve taken it over,” Tayana said finally.

“Ma serannas.”

They were, in fact, in the tavern, but it wasn’t buzzing with the energy Ashara expected, the energy she felt bursting under her skin. Everyone was tired. One aide de camp was slumped over a desk, sleeping, quill still in hand. The field commanders were sitting at a group of cobbled-together tables, maps spread out in front of them. One of Eshne’s former lieutenants, Halamar, was sitting in her place. None of them were talking. Ashara abruptly felt like an intruder, a fool for coming to find them. She heard them using words like "acceptable losses" and "contingency plans" and "it depends on what happens with the western front" and realized just how small she was. How useless she was, after all. She'd charged over here, full of self-importance, but she was just one aide, not even a soldier. She was back to the part of war that was just waiting - but for how long?

She went back into the street and started wandering. She wondered where Haleir had ended up. She decided to go up onto the ramparts again. She should really find something to eat. She opened her connection to the Fade instead and drew on some energy from there. She hoped she'd remembered to send a reassuring wave towards her parents the night before. Exhausted by stress and lulled by sex, she'd drifted off easily and relinquished her control of the Fade.

She had sex. With Haleir. It was at once the most minor thing (looking down from the walls, she could see the neat rows of dead soldier in a quiet courtyard) and the biggest thing. Or - it felt like it should be a big thing, and it wasn't. That was it.

There were sentries posted. She stood by one silently, looking out over the road that went north out of Shalasan, out of Enasan. It was a twisted mess, the dense forest all around it burnt, pools of blood and other viscera pockmarking the whole landscape. She could see the Orlesians, too, their banners and tents and their own sentries. She felt so trapped.

"You're a mage?" The sentry asked her. He was young, acne still marking his cheeks.

"Yes."

"Thank you, lethallan. Without the mages..."

Ashara's throat closed. She had done so little.

"You're welcome, lethallin."

She heard a horn then - a variety of them, actually, different calls for different units, including her own. She left the walls and returned to the last muster point they'd used to find her fellow soldiers - minus those they'd lost. They'd lost - a dozen now? Haleir was already there, saw her and gave her a tight-lipped smile. She waved at him and fell into line. Eshne's lieutenant Halamar was standing at the front, where she should have been.

"Be ready to leave within five minutes," Halamar said. "And ready to fight in less than that. No wandering off. We are going to stay within the walls of the town and hold."

"Until when?" Tayana said.

"Until I say otherwise."

"Why?" Ashara asked.

Halamar hardened her eyes. "I am not Eshne, but I am your commanding officer now. You will respect me."

They all murmured their assent. Ashara lowered her eyes, her face hot.

"Tar'lan?" Haleir asked. "When will Eshne be well again?"

Halamar glanced away. "We will see."

"These Elvhen," Ilbryn murmured at her side. "So much power and yet they seem so - fragile."

"Yes," Ashara said. "It is difficult, with the Veil in place. Once they would have been able to do these things with ease. But to expend such power now, when mana is limited..."

"We should be using them more, whatever the cost," said Ilbryn at her back.

"Their lives count too," Ashara said, voice rising.

"They've lived so long. And they seem to still have forever even with the Veil in place. The rest of us have so little time," he shot back.

Ashara had no answer for that.

They were back to the waiting. Everyone in their gear, standing at attention or near to it in a street just off of the main one near the town gates. Ashara wondered what the idea was. Standing at the ready to flee or to fight.

"You never did tell me how you and Haleir did that trick," Tayana said at one point during the morning. "When Eshne weakened the Veil with the power of her spell. You both seemed - rejuvenated. You're doing it now, aren't you?"

Tayana's aura brushed quickly against her own. Ashara was indeed connecting to the Fade, drawing from it.

"It's just remaining open to the Fade, drawing in beneficial energy," Ashara said. "My father taught me."

"So did mine," Haleir added.

"Ah - so it's an Elvhen trick? You should teach us. It would be useful. Since we can't simply send every Elvhen in Enasan to the front and let them spend every ounce of power they have to save us."

"I'll try," Ashara said. "Here it's - the same energy you would use to start a creation spell, but vibrating at a different frequency." She summoned the current to her hand and let it travel towards Tayana and her aura. "There - feel it."

Tayana closed her eyes, concentrating. "Hmm - maybe - can you make it stronger?"

"Not really. It's - well, not weak, but not - loud?" Ashara fumbled. It had been so natural when her father explained it to her. She felt it instinctively.

She and Tayana tried a while longer, Haleir lingering near them in their loose formation, saying nothing. The day went on. Some people got brave enough to take out cards and start a game, Tayana among them. Haleir sidled up to her then.

"So," he said.

Ashara stiffened. "So."

He let out a long breath. "I went and saw Rafe last night."

"Oh?" She relaxed.

"Yes. I hadn't been brave enough before but - after we -"

"Had sex," she supplied, though her cheeks colored.

"Yes. And thinking about how uncertain everything was, how any day we could die - I had to. I had to see him and understand."

"And?"

Haleir looked away. "He talked about shame. About being ashamed that he said what he said. That he only wanted to survive. That he knew I would overcome prison and those accusations. That he was proud I was protecting Enasan in this time. That he - that he still thought of me."

Ashara focused intently on him, everything else forgotten. "How did that make you feel?"

"Honestly? Angry. I saw him and I was so angry. And something inside me shifted. He appeared in black and white in the Fade. No colors. And I knew I didn't love him anymore."

"I see."

"It's - good though. To have closure. Given that I could still die today. Or tomorrow, or the day after." He cocked his head. "We're good, right? You and I? After we -"

"Had sex?"

"I was going to say it that time. I didn't want to offend your delicate sensibilities the first time."

Ashara rolled her eyes. "Yes, everything is fine. I don't regret it. Do you?"

"No."

"Good."

They drifted into silence. It was noon, the winter sun high overhead. It had been weeks since Clermont. It felt like years.

"You should see him," Haleir said. "Your Lucius. You never know."

_ You should not have let him go. _

Ashara was tense again. "Never know what?"

"How he feels about you now. Whether or not you will die today or tomorrow."

Was he right?

"Maybe tonight," she said. "Depending on what happens."

Her heart leapt out of her chest at the thought. If - if -

But that was too much hope when she was wearing armor and her staff was on her back, and the town was surrounded.

"Let's play cards," she said.

They passed the rest of the afternoon this way, arguing over rules, and pretending none of them were afraid to die. Every now and then she looked at Haleir and remembered the way it felt to have him inside her, and every now and then she imagined the way Lucius looked when he was tired but not asleep yet, the soft smile that would come across his face if she touched him gently while he was in that state.

The alarm sounded at dusk. The Orlesians were advancing, templars at the fore. They all looked to each other nervously. Halamar rallied them.

"Forward. The orders are to go forward."

So they weren't going to run. What happened? What made that decision clear. Ashara swallowed. Halamar looked to her.

"Stay back, but prepare to fight. You aren't going to be an aide this time."

Ashara steeled herself. Halamar was right. It was time. They had lost and lost and lost and they were going to hold this town - this little town with its little wall, too weak to withstand a real siege but just enough to try and hold the Orlesians here. She was going to fight.

Fight she did. Even when it became painfully apparent that they were losing, inch by inch. She wove barriers and summoned every element she knew, drove the blade of her staff into lungs and throats and sides. She directed strengthening waves of energy towards the warriors and rogues swirling around her, trying to force them back. Templars tried to smite, tried to drain, but she pushed back, back, back against them, drew harder and harder on the weak Veil to sustain herself and them.

And still they lost, lost, lost.

And then an Elvhen man appeared, and unleashed hell upon the Orlesian forces that came and came and came without relenting.

He turned them to stone and trapped others in swirling vortexes of Fade energy, froze others. He was a dance of death, easy, effortless, powerful. The Orlesians melted in his wake. He did as much damage as hundreds and hundreds of soldiers had struggled to do for days. He cut through the templars, the chevaliers, the common soldiers, the mages, all the way back to officers and their tents, flicking aside challengers like they were grains of rice. He was unstoppable.

“Look, look -” people shouted.

“We have a chance!”

Ashara’s mouth went dry when she felt the mage’s aura.

The man was her father.

Solas, Fen'Harel, the Dread Wolf, the man who braided her hair and carried her on his shoulders, was the one who cut through the Orlesian army back to its commanding officers, and turned them into statues with faces twisted into masks of horror, and turned to the remaining soldiers with eyes alight with blue flame.

"Leave," he said, in a voice that echoed with unearthly power.

Ashara stood there, watching - horrified, afraid, relieved - as the Orlesians scattered in his wake. The hemorrhaging had stopped. They had won. 

Now they only had to wait for the cost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Solas is 100000% done with these Orlesians, guys.
> 
> Prompts, suggestions, comments and general discussion more than welcome here or on my [Tumblr](https://buttsonthebeach.tumblr.com/)!


	15. Chapter 15

Ellana was certain that war was mostly paperwork.

Paperwork, and a worry that gnawed its way into her bones. A burrowing insect like the kind that destroyed aravels and trees. Tiny and unstoppable and devastating.

If her time as Inquisitor started to convince her of these things, her time as High Commander of Enasan only solidified it.

(High Commander was a stupid title, and she hated it, but she also understood its political necessity. She outranked all of the field commanders, but while her role was primarily political, she was not royalty. Enasan was a republic. She'd lobbied to be called regent, but was overruled.

"Regent makes it sound like you are waiting for something," Arlanal pointed out. "Like you are waiting to step aside."

_ I am _ , Ellana thought.)

But while her time as Inquisitor had at least featured long stretches in the field, where she could loose her frustration and fear through her arrows, this war had been nothing but talk for her. Aside from that initial foray to the mountain pass where the first true battle of the war took place, she had not been in the field for more than an hour or so at a time. And even those forays were spent at a distance from the fighting, watching through a spyglass. And they were blisteringly quick visits. Ellana never thought she would dislike the Crossroads, but she hated how quickly she would go from her office in the capital to some outpost or fortification or battlefield. At least when she was Inquisitor she had the leisure of those long rides, or hikes, just her and her companions, where she could shed as many of the layers of her title as she dared.

Now there was no reprieve.

Not from the requisitions, not from letters to diplomats and nobles (the Bannorn was nervous enough of the idea of Orlesian forces crossing through Enasan, through the Frostback Basin, and into Ferelden, that they agreed to send supplies and to encourage King Alistair to speak out against the Orlesian aggression - but they weren't nervous enough to send troops). Not from doubting herself and all she'd done.

Orlais was bringing the full might of its army to bear against her people, and the Chantry was still trying to investigate the Veil.

Caralina's agents had caught three teams now, all Chantry sanctioned, all trying to infiltrate Enasan. The good news was that they had been caught before crossing the border and turned away, rather than killed, like the first team had been. The other good news was that Vivienne had formally refused to lend her mages to the Orlesian army, on account of de Pelletier's conduct and the accusations against him, until a Chantry investigation proved that there was reason to invade Enasan.

The bad news was that Cassandra would not stop sending agents - and would not send Chantry forces to stop Villiers - until Ellana agreed to the investigation. She’d said as much. Or, rather, Divine Victoria had said as much, in her official correspondence.

"You are doing the right thing," Solas told her over and over again. 

They saw each other every day but it didn't feel that way. She didn't feel present with him, even when they were lying in their bed, and he was a heavy weight at her back, an arm and leg thrown over her to draw her as close as he could. She was not his Ellana right now. She was Commander Lavellan. She slept more nights at the headquarters than she did in their bed. She spent more time talking to people who weren't him. She spent every day with thoughts and feelings burrowing through her bones, rotting her inside and out, and he seemed calm as ever.

“I made the Antivan pasta that you like,” he would say when she came home after spending her evening signing letters to the families of dead soldiers.

“I’m not hungry,” she would reply.

“Very well,” he would say softly, and kiss her forehead.

Or she would come home in the morning after being awake all night, taking multiple trips through the Crossroads, and she would tell him of the horrors she saw in the battlefields in Oruvun, the western province, where the Orlesian soldiers docked the ears of dead elven soldiers and strung them up from trees, and Solas’s forehead would crease, and his lips would thin out into a hard line, but all he would do was hold her close.

“I am sorry, vhenan.”

Or she would have an okay day, a day in which not too many people died and she was not plagued by the fear that she had carved the first elven nation in centuries and would soon live to see it fall again, and he would discuss his magical experiments of the day, as if he did not worry about the same things.

Or she would tell him all of these things, and he would simply shake his head and look away, his face an impassive mask.

She wanted to scream at him.

In retrospect, that was likely why she did end up losing her temper when she was woken by a runner in the night with the news that the central division of the army had been pushed all the way back to the town of Shalasan. The paper was already crinkled when she threw it onto the bed where he lay, half awake. She had crinkled it when her hand tightened unconsciously at the sight of Eshne’s name under the list of commanders whose units were present. No names or official totals for any casualties yet. But still. Still. The mere possibility that Ashara -

“Four hundred dead,” she said. “At least.”

Solas sat up and rubbed his eyes. He picked up the paper. Ellana’s whole body still felt shaky with pent up emotion. She’d flung the paper but it was not an arrow. It did not fly straight and true. It did not give her the physical release of her bow. The physical release that had been lost to her for two decades and more. The sense that she could fight. That she could pick up a weapon and  _ do something _ about the dangers that surrounded good people, people who did not deserve it. That she could protect people.

Now all she had was another stupid title, and paperwork.

Solas sighed, and put the paper back down.

“Come back to bed, arasha. Let us speak of this in the morning.”

Anger lit up the back of Ellana's spine like a firecracker. She sucked in her breath all at once. He had the luxury of waiting. Of sleeping. None of this weight was on him. And she could not take it anymore. Her own helplessness. Her own isolation.

"No."

She turned on her heel and left, heading for the door, and the modified footwraps that she could put on one-handed. She had to move. She had to do something. She had to go, and go, until she escaped the racket in her head -

_ I need to approve the latest orders for recruiting more troops. I need to respond to Josephine's letter. Dorian called me over the crystal the other day and I never spoke to him. We need more fortifications around our granaries. We need to ensure that our forts have enough food if it comes to a siege. We need to decide if we can afford to spread our troops even thinner. I'll tell Caralina to send more scouts to the western parts of the border to see if we can afford to take more from there. They're still pressing near the Frostbacks, trying to cut off our access to ores and our ties with Orzammar. I need to approve that next lyrium shipment - _

"Vhenan."

Ellana was outside, cool breeze on her face, leaves and stars above her, her breath quick and sharp. Solas was at her side. She knew it by the warmth of his body. She did not look at him. She hated him for his calm certainty. His conviction. She hated that he did not have these thoughts rattling through his head. She hated that she was alone and helpless and powerful again, just as she had been when they handed her that gods-damned sword at Skyhold.

She hated that he was still so calm after reading the paper the runner brought her. It did not have the casualties for Ashara's unit. But it had the estimated total casualties.  _ Four hundred dead.  _ More than the day before. And the day before that. Not counting casualties from the other divisions of the army.

_ They will bleed us dry, even if we hold them at Shalasan. I will have to send everyone's children to fight them, and not just my own. And it won't matter. And I could have stopped this. I could have given in to Villiers. _

“What is it?”

“It’s this entire war,” she said. “And how -  _ calm _ you are. About all of it. How can you be so calm?”

Solas snorted. “Would you be served by my anger?”

She wanted to strangle him. 

“At least I would not feel alone in  _ my _ anger if you seemed to feel -  _ something!” _

But as she said the words, she turned, and saw his face, and it was the face of the man she loved. And it was raw with pain and rage.

“I would think that you, of all people, would know not to accuse me of having no feelings just because I am hiding them.” His words had an edge she hadn’t heard in - gods, in years.

She was a fool. A temperamental fool, no better than the squabbling youth who’d been hauled before her Keeper for picking fights with other youths who picked on her for the darkness of her skin.

“If I have seemed detached, it is only because I assumed that you did not need the burden of worrying about my feelings in the midst of everything else you must carry.”

Ellana sighed. The firecracker that lit up her spine so quickly fizzled out. “I’m sorry. I should have known that.”

“I could have communicated it better.”

Solas reached out and touched her arm with the tips of his fingers. She felt a tiny flicker of his magic, just enough to make the hairs on her arm stand up. It was cold outside. She could turn to him, go back to his warmth. She could let out a deep breath and re-center herself. She was Commander Lavellan. She knew on that day in Clermont that Villiers wasn't going to stop. That there was never another option.

But she didn’t want to be Commander Lavellan. She wanted to be Ellana. She wanted to be angry and scared, and for Solas to share his own anger and fear.

“I feel so helpless,” she said. The thought bubbled up like poison from a wound that had been lanced.

Solas laughed, and pulled her into his embrace. He smelled like himself - the concentrated, musky smell that always seemed to linger in their sheets. She leaned into his shoulder.

“So do I,” he said. “You come home and tell me these things and in the same breath tell me that there is nothing I can do. I do not know how much longer I can bear that feeling. There  _ are _ things that I can do. And yet I am forbidden from doing them.”

Ellana wanted at first to discount the words as childish. But she reigned that impulse in, and Solas went on, releasing her from his arms and turning away to pace, his hands gesturing impatiently.

“You hand me papers like the one you  _ handed _ me tonight,” he did not look at her as he said it, but she winced at his choice of words. As she always was, she was embarrassed by her loss of temper already. “And I see the number of the People we lost, and I think of how many I could have saved with a single spell. I am not all that I once was, but I am not helpless, and yet this war has made me feel only that. And yet none of this is your problem, and so I should bear it, and see this through - but - vhenan - if we lose this war - if we lose our daughter - while I sat by and did nothing -”

He’d turned back to face her as he said the last of those words, and there was no mask at all anymore. There was only her bondmate, as sad and lost and angry as she was. Her frustration with him loosened more. She was not as alone as she thought. Solas did not have the paperwork (the fucking  _ paperwork _ ) or the responsibilities she did. But he carried the same helplessness. They were together in that. She stepped close to him, and pulled him down, and kissed him hard.

"Let's go," she said when they parted. "And let's stop being helpless."

*

Solas had to admit that the arrival of the templars on the battlefield of Shalasan was not a surprise. How quickly they arrived was.

He and Ellana had agreed, that night that they decided that it was time to warn the Orlesians that Enasan would not go quietly, that Solas did not have to command an army or even unleash the full extent of his power to change the tide of a battle.

"We'll start by concentrating the mages in the central division of the army," Ellana said, the scribes around her furiously taking notes, preparing to send ravens and runners to deliver them. "The field commanders have already agree to that idea. But if Divine Victoria decides to loan the templars to the Orlesians, we will be very vulnerable to their attack."

"So then what will we do if our mages fail?" Abelas asked. Solas wondered if his old friend had slept much in the last weeks. He could feel him drawing on the Fade, seeking energy and strength, the way he himself often did. But he could not keep that up forever.

"We will send Solas," Ellana said calmly. "We will send him in a single, tactical strike. A warning."

The room went silent at that suggestion.

“You truly think that is wise? You have considered the message it will send?” Ilriane Tabris asked, her tone cautious. She looked the worst of everyone in the room. Her pale skin was ashen, the bags under her eyes pronounced.

“Yes,” Ellana said. “I do think that it is wise. I think it is wise to remind them that at any given moment we could destroy them. That our people are not the helpless victims they wish we were. And it is also wise to show that we know how to use such power with restraint. That is why it will be a tactical strike. Solas will go in, make his way to the commanders, and kill them. He will only take as many lives as he needs to in order to achieve that goal and protect any particularly vulnerable units of our own forces. And he will make a deliberate show of it - using magics that their templars have never even heard of.”

It was the plan they’d agreed on that night that Ellana stormed out of the house. They’d gone for a walk - in their nightclothes, uncaring what anyone who recognized them might think - and talked it all out. They became partners again, in the way that they were meant to be. Now they had only to convince the rest of the council - or to invoke Ellana’s privilege as High Commander, and make it an order. It felt good at the time - the two of them walking, planning, deciding.

Now, looking around the room, Solas felt a rising sense of queasiness. He recognized those expressions. He recognized the way Ellana - his own bondmate - was talking about him.

Like he was a weapon.

Another marker to be moved around her war table.

And that was what they had decided, that night walking around the woods. And yet he felt himself shoot backwards through time to a cold marble hall, standing at Mythal’s side as her newest general, her newest prize, and how ill it made him feel even then, how he felt some measure of his personhood slip away. How he’d buried that feeling and decided it didn’t matter.

He would have to do that again.

He thought he would have time for that burying, but instead the templars arrived more quickly than they expected, and he had to leave in a hurry for Shalasan. Not too much of a hurry to stop and see Ellana, though. She dismissed all of her advisors so it was just the two of them in her war room, and she pulled him down and kissed him hard on the mouth and then just rested their foreheads together. He closed his eyes and memorized the way it felt to have her close, the smell of her hair, the aura that was all her own, mage or no.

“Come back to me,” she said, her voice quiet but her tone firm as steel. “That’s an order, Dread Wolf.”

He kissed her again, crushed her to him, heard the quiet sound she made in her throat and felt her rise up on her tiptoes so she could be even closer to him. He lifted her, held her against his body. He could not carry the weight of everything on her shoulders but he could at least do this.

Then he left, went to the eluvian, and shed layers of himself on the way to Shalasan.

For more than twenty years now he had been the peacemaker, the partner, the father, the scholar. But Ellana had not called him  _ vhenan,  _ or even  _ Solas _ , as he left. Ashara was not there to call him  _ Papae _ . No. Ellana had called him Dread Wolf. And that was who he would be today. He would again where the mask of Fen’Harel, He Who Hunts Alone, the Bringer of Nightmares. Because that was what his people needed of him once again.

It felt better than he wanted to admit.

What he’d told Ellana was true. He had felt so helpless - so impotent - watching the war progress, watching his daughter slip in and out of danger, in and out of despair. And it felt good to dart through the Crossroads, calling on every ounce of magic he had, until he reached the old altar of Mythal tucked into the jungle, where he had seen his old friend for the first time in the Veiled world, so many years ago, where Ellana’s last belief in the gods of her people had shattered at Flemeth’s feet. Where Ellana, nine months gone with child, had once met him, and demanded that he be a better partner. A better father.

He’d told Ashara once that three women had shaped his life - her mother, herself, and Mythal. He felt all of them with him there, as he walked up the steps, and then knelt down and bowed his head. But he only needed one of them now.

“My friend,” he murmured, looking up to the statue, its face so worn by time that it no longer had features. But the shape of it - the dragon wings - the memory of this place - the thinness of the Veil here - all did what he needed them to. They stirred to life the shard of Mythal that slept deep within him after all these years. They sent magic singing through every fiber of his being. He took a deep breath, felt his pool of mana expand, felt more magic flood in to fill the space, heard Mythal’s voice rise to the back of his mind:

_ Go. Hunt. It is time for justice. _

He gathered more and more ambient magic as he raced through the Crossroads once more. It felt good. Natural. It had been more than twenty years, yes, since he turned away from his journey of death. But twenty years was a drop in a bucket when compared with centuries. Millennia. The Dread Wolf was a mask, but it was one he wore well.

_ Go. Hunt. It is time for justice. _

And he had always followed Mythal’s orders so well.

When he arrived in Shalasan it was with a flood of power that overtook every other sensation. He did not hear the crack of the trees that broke in his wake, or his blood pounding in his ears as he batted aside attacks from all quarters. He did not feel the attacks that did come through - arrows, stabs, slashes. He only felt the pure, raw magic, the savage joy of snapping his fingers and seeing hardened warriors, men and women who would have killed him and his family and his people in an instant if given the chance, turned to stone. The glee at the sight of the terrified templars built in his throat, a howl that he had to hold back.

_ Go. Hunt. It is time for justice. _

(Except that time - he wasn’t positive - but he thought the voice cracked on  _ justice _ , that perhaps he heard  _ vengeance _ instead, or at the same time.)

He forged onward, to the obscene glinting gold armor of the generals, and he froze them slowly, so they would feel it, so their faces would be gnarled with fear forever.

He was not Solas anymore. He was not helpless anymore.

But in the wake of the Orlesians’ terrified retreat, that was no longer a good thing.

Because as he turned and walked back towards the elven soldiers (shoulders back, head high, face impassive, he knew this role well), he saw that there was fear in their eyes too. They parted for him like a sea, but only some were reverent. Some spit in his direction. Others were too afraid to even look at him. He came back into his body, the magic receding. Mythal’s spirit pressed gently on his mind, like the brush of a fingertip, and he acknowledged her retreat. It was not her. Not really. She was with him in the same way that he feared Falon’Din would always be with Ashara - an echo, a memory, an impulse.

Ashara.

She was somewhere in this sea of elves that parted for him. She had seen this display. He had always hoped that she would not see him like this. She knew from Falon’Din’s memories some of what he had been - but she pushed those thoughts away as foreign, intrusions on her own mind.

This memory would be her own.

Solas made it to Abelas’s tent before his knees buckled, his body weak in the wake of what he’d done. It was not the suffocating silence of uthenera, a weight so heavy he could not shake it off, but it was enough. And maybe it was not weakness at all. Maybe it was shame. Shame at how easily he’d slipped back into old habits. How easily he had become Fen’Harel once more. How this was yet another story that history could twist. Another way for them to call him  _ monster _ .

He wanted Ellana so badly it hurt.

He did get the next best thing, instead.

“Papae?”

Ashara’s voice was urgent, afraid. He should project strength for her. But he was so  _ weak _ .

She knelt and hugged him, and it was hard to feel through both of their armors, but it was still enough.

“Thank you,” she murmured. “Thank you.”

He embraced her back, and tried to ignore the way her hair was matted with blood, the tremble in her hands.

*

He stayed with the army for three days, three days in which the Orlesian huddled in fear, well behind the lines of statues that had once been their comrades.

“We should line the whole border with them,” he heard one soldier say. “Fucking shem scum.”

That was not the plan. The plan was to claim the moral high ground and return the bodies to the Orlesians. To that end, Solas went out the next day and used the same raw energy to carry the statues to the Orlesians. He did not bother with a white flag. The elven army stood at his back, but they were at attention, not in battle formations. They knew the Orlesians would not dare attack him. Solas made sure he was calm, impassive, as he let the statues fall at their feet, one at a time. The officers that remained faced him, doing their best to look unafraid.

“You'll find they are now light enough to carry all the way back to Val Royeaux,” he said. “I suggest you do so.”

The foremost officer looked down at the statue Solas had dropped at his feet. At the twisted, agonized face of his former commander.

“You cannot be everywhere at once, Dread Wolf,” she said. She managed to keep the tremble out of her voice, at least. Solas laughed.

“You imagine limits where there are none, quickling child. May you learn.”

But as he calmly made his way back across the battlefield, he knew he was wrong. There were limits. He had to walk a tightrope here. To be Solas and Fen'Harel. To be just enough of a monster to frighten them, and enough of a person that they could forgive him.

The elven army parted for him once more. He walked through them, at peace with his separateness. He intended to go to Abelas's tent once more, to sequester himself as the symbol he was, and then to quietly return to the capital. But of course, Ashara stopped him.

“Papae! Over here!”

And he could not say no to her, whatever kind of symbol he was. He was her father first.

Ashara was sitting in a small cluster of soldiers surrounded a makeshift table, on which was spread a game of Wicked Grace. Ashara was losing, naturally - he could tell that at a glance. He hoped it was not affecting her mood. It did not seem to be. She looked tired - exhausted, even - but she did not have the same hollow air she had at the worst moments of her despair. The other soldiers, for their part, were doing their best not to stare at him - except for one. An Elvhen man, though he did not quite have the ageless gravitas of people like Abelas and Eshne - so perhaps a man more Ashara’s age?

“Are you going?” Ashara asked.

“Soon.”

Her face fell.

“Ah. I was hoping you could help us. Haleir and I have been trying to show Tayana how we draw energy and sustenance from the Fade. It’s trickier to teach than I thought.”

“That is because it is not really a skill that is taught. It is meant to be natural to all elves. It is not about teaching a particular spell. It is about teaching someone to be aware of the energy already around them, and how its natural home is within us.”

The soldiers were staring openly now, but the stares made sense. They were the stares of students, and not of frightened strangers.

So he did not spend three days with the army as a symbol, as a statute like the ones he made of the Orlesian commanders and the troops surrounding them. He had to be that man - to be Fen’Harel - every time they moved the line forward, repelling any Orlesian scouts or stragglers they found. But when they were not doing that, he was a teacher again. Like in his mountain refuges, showing frightened slaves what they were capable of.

“There, better. You are all doing well. It will be more natural for some than for others. And, of course, it will be hardest for those of you who are not mages, but it is still possible to feel what I am talking about - to feel it, and remember who we are,” he told them on the second day, when the group was larger. More than just his daughter and her friends, but soldiers from every unit. Elves from every corner of Thedas.

His people, even though he had not always thought of them that way.

So when the courier finally came for him, saying his presence was requested back in the capital, he was surrounded by soldiers, all on their feet now, swaying and moving with the rhythms he explained to them. He was teaching them to hear, to feel, something they should have been born understanding as easily as breathing. He thought of Ellana, that warm close night in their tent when he made her shiver by running this very energy under her skin. He watched the elves around him - his daughter included - and he remembered why they were fighting.

Ashara flung her arms around him before he left, careless that her friends and even some of her superiors were near.

“Stay safe, Papae. Give Mamae a hug for me.”

She felt strong. Her embrace was tighter than it had ever been. He hated that she wore armor, that she was only so strong because she had been fighting. But he was so proud of her, of her strength, nonetheless.

So when he returned to the capital, to the council chambers where he was awaited, he did not just tell them how he slaughtered the Orlesians where they stood, how the scouts reported that they were in a precipitous retreat, and they expected to maintain control over all the ground they’d lost. He told them of the lessons he taught. Of how right it was, to see so many young elves reaching for their birthright.

There was silence when he was done. Ellana, to his surprise, was the one who spoke. She leaned forward in her chair, her fine silk tunic making a quiet sound, and said:

“Why are you telling us this?”

Solas tensed. She was Commander Lavellan, then, not Ellana. He thought she of all people would appreciate the story - especially because of the glancing references to their daughter it included.

“This war has been hard. Frightening. I thought it would be beneficial to remind ourselves why we are fighting. For the chance that each and every one of our people might experience what those soldiers did at my side.”

Ellana leaned back in her chair, sighing. Her eyes went unfocused. She was tense, despite her slumped posture. What had happened in his absence? He had forgotten what it was like to be a soldier on the front lines of a conflict - how dilated your view became, and how you forgot that there were other theatres of war, other pressing matters. He was not even Ellana’s first report of the day. Perhaps she was probing him on this matter because of something else?

“Thank you for all that you have done. You are dismissed. I trust the couriers can find you at home if we need anything further?”

She was the symbol now, and not him, but he thought he heard a shade of warmth in the phrase  _ at home _ . He knew that whatever warmth the rest of her persona lacked at the moment, it had nothing to do with him or with their bond. He had proof of that, later, when the door opened, and he went to her at once, and she was in his arms almost before he could even open them.

“I think we have to tell everyone,” she said, her cheek pressed to his shoulder, her lips against his neck. She was wearing the same silk tunic, but she was his Ellana again. Commander Lavellan no more.

“Tell everyone what, my heart?”

“About the Veil. I think we should stop denying everything. We should let the Chantry investigation happen. Cassandra - Divine Victoria keeps writing. She says that she has not given the Orlesians any authority to command the templars, but that she feels she needs to send them in order to be able to complete the investigation, and that there are not enough templars anymore to send them without protection. So they are coming alongside the Orlesian troops under Chantry command. She was very specific on that point.”

She pulled away, started pacing.

“So Cassandra is going out of her way to make it clear that she is walking a tightrope as well,” Solas said, following her train of thought. “That she does not support Villiers, not really - but she will not let this matter go.”

“Exactly. And hearing you tell that story today - I think it just crystallized in me. I’m tired of hiding something when it’s the right thing. We need to proceed cautiously - but I think it’s time to proceed. And that starts with making sure our own people know and understand. Then we can move on to how we will tell the rest of Thedas. So what you did with the soldiers - could you do that with others? Start - touring, sort of? Just sporadically, because we’ll need you here in case we have to send you out again...”

She trailed off. She looked so tired. There was more silver in her hair, he realized, than there had been at the start of the year. But her eyes were alight with the same passion he’d always loved in her. The same passion that he knew - knew - would carry their people through this trial, and to the future he’d glimpsed that day with their daughter and her fellow soldiers.

“Then let us begin," Solas said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you as always for reading! I hope to have another Lucius interlude up for you guys soon :) We're getting closer to the endgame of this fic...
> 
> Prompts, suggestions, comments and general discussion more than welcome here or on my [Tumblr](https://buttsonthebeach.tumblr.com/)!


	16. Interlude: Lucius

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's time to hang out with Lucius some more! A short interlude, but one that I couldn't resist.
> 
> ALSO: because [WardsAreFunctioning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WardsAreFunctioning/pseuds/WardsAreFunctioning) is the nicest friend ever, she commissioned [this gorgeous tarot-style art of Lucius and Ashara](https://buttsonthebeach.tumblr.com/post/178934640416/guys-guys-guys-its-my), and you should all stare at it with me in awe. LOOK AT THEM.

When Lucius first started to learn about demons, he would never have predicted that Desire would be the one most drawn to him. As far as he knew, they were lurid things - bare skin, curves, full lips, and they spoke in seductive whispers of things he only thought about furtively, now and then, even as he got older. He had no appetite for constant discussion and daydreaming about sex like his fellow apprentices. He was curious, but not obsessed. So why would Desire come to him?

And yet, inevitably, in those early days in the Vyrantium Circle, it was always Desire.

Except his Desire demons did not come in gauzy silks with honeyed whispers on their forked tongues. They wrapped him gently in blankets that always smelled like ink and fresh paper, like the printshop where he’d grown up, like the soap his mother used to wash her hands.

“Come with me,” they whispered. “And you’ll always be safe. You’ll always be loved. You’ll never be alone again.”

Or, later, they came to him wearing his own face and fine Altus robes, and walked him through the halls of fine houses and poured gold into his hands until he fell to the floor under its weight.

“Come with me,” they whispered. “And you’ll never know  _ want _ again.”

Because Lucius did want. He  _ wanted _ . He wanted his family back, and he wanted to stop being the poor orphan boy with a hand-me-down staff and hand-me-down robes and no choice but to beg for a patron who would sponsor him to Enchanter. He wanted to have a clear sense of his future, to stop feeling so reliant on others, to be more confident, more brave. He wanted, and wanted, and wanted, and Desire offered, and offered, and offered.

He knew better than to listen. However much he wanted, Lucius knew that the answers did not lie in the Fade, but in the real world.

And yet, when Desire came to him wearing Ashara’s face, he hesitated.

He was dreaming alone in his bed in Minrathous when it came to him, and in the real world he had almost everything he ever wanted when he was a lonely apprentice. He had a place of his own, supported himself with his own money, had the support of Maevaris as both a patron and a family member, had nearly all of Mae’s family and friends as his family and friends, he was making a difference in Tevinter, one tiny step at a time -

And yet he still wanted.

Even then, Desire wasn’t obscene when it came to him. It was just Ashara. Just her, in a soft cotton nightgown that brushed the tops of her bare feet, her brown hair down and curly and big as a cloud, haloing her face and neck and shoulders. Her eyes blue as the sky.

“You could have this, if you wanted,” Desire said in Ashara’s voice. “If you come with me, I will be her forever. You can have her without facing any of the things that made you let her go in the real world. With none of the worries or the complications.”

Desire walked closer to him. It smelled like her - the lyrium-like smell of her magic, and the oils she put in her hair. His heart raced when it put a hand on his chest. It was her hand, that hand he had held so many times - had held on the morning he said good-bye to her, told her they could not be together anymore.

“Don’t you want that, Lucius?” It had her lilting accent down perfectly. And he could - maybe - if he just listened for a little while, just let the demon get a little closer - if he could have just one small piece -

He put his arm around her waist, and his hand in her hair, and he held her.

“Yes - I know you want this. I’ll give it to you. Just let me in. Let me in.”

Ashara’s hands dug into his sides hard. His mind felt fogged. She would never hurt him, but this hurt. And he felt strangely torn - like he was in two places at once - like Ashara’s voice was doubled, coming from within his mind and from the woman he was holding -

With a sudden pop, the dream changed, and his arms were empty. His ears were ringing. He was in - Orlais? He looked around. Val Chevin. He’d been there once before, with Ashara and Claudia. To visit the arcanist and her wife. His arms were empty. Where was -

Ashara was at his side. The real Ashara. He knew it at once. Her aura had an unmistakable singsong feeling to it in the Fade. Like snatches of music he’d heard before, just out of earshot. Seeing her there, even without touching her, he knew what he had just grasped - what he had just been tempted by - was a hollow thing.

He also knew now, in ways he could no longer deny, how much he wanted her in his life.

“It's me,” she said, reaching out and touching his elbow. The pulse of mana she directed towards him made him shiver.

“Oh,” he said. “I see.”

He was still blinded by her, still blinded by the force of his own feelings, as they began to walk, as she threaded her arm through Claudia’s - because she was there too, he hadn’t even realized that. They walked along the streets of Val Chevin as she remembered them, and she imagined food for he and Claudia but not for herself, and he gave her pieces of his food anyway. He listened to her talk about the war, and then he talked about his own work, and he let every ounce of his excitement show. Because he knew now. The feelings that had been complicated before were clear. He wanted her in his life. He wanted her to be there when he woke.

Except, of course, she wasn’t.

Lucius woke in his bed in Minrathous, alone, arms empty, and thought of what the demon had said.  _ You can have her without facing any of the things that made you let her go in the real world. With none of the worries or the complications. _

All of those worries and complications still existed. She would never move to Tevinter - and should not move to Tevinter, where she would face countless obstacles that she did not deserve. He had spent so much time and effort building the life that he had here. He’d gone after everything Desire used to offer him when he was young, and he finally had it. If he wanted to be with her, he’d have to give all of that up.

That didn’t seem as daunting as it did when he chose to break things off with her.

His heart sped up at the thought. Was it possible, then, that he could - ?

But he had no idea how she felt, after all these months apart. After everything she’d been through - much of it at the hands of humans.

He stepped outside his flat, and as he heard the cries of the nearest people hawking broadsheets for sale with the latest news on them, as he heard them discussing the threat Enasan faced from the Orlesian troops bearing down on their borders, his stomach sank down as though weighted by lead. And she was still in terrible danger every day. And even if she did still love him - even if he could truly give up the land of his birth, the business he was building, the friends he’d made - they might not have a home to move to. Orlais could wipe Enasan off the face of Thedas.

Lucius could not bring himself to buy a broadsheet and read the news. He walked past the hawkers, towards the blacksmithy, and tried to push all thoughts of Ashara Lavellan aside.

Except that not thinking of her was easier said than done, when every morning he left his flat and the hawkers were there with their broadsheets, shouting out numbers of elven casualties as the Orlesians broke their lines over and over and over again, and every time he was certain one of them was her. Except that he would dream of that - Despair making him picture her body laid out for burial, walled off from him by impenetrable glass, so that he could not even truly say good-bye. Except that even on a day when he had managed to push those thoughts aside, she appeared in his dreams again.

This time, Desire was not tempting him. He was simply in a bookstore, reading, and then she was there, and she was gaunt and afraid and it took everything in him not to hold her. She said his name softly, like it was more for herself than for him, like she would break if she spoke too loudly, but he heard her anyway, and then his whole being was bent towards her. He’d heard of the battles along the main road towards the capital. Heard of how badly Enasan was losing. He’d been so frightened for her.

“Tell me what’s happening. What’s going wrong. I’m no soldier but - maybe I can help you talk it out, or think of a strategy, or there’s something I could tell Claudia or Dorian or Maevaris.”

She was staring at the bookcases. But his fear kept moving him forward, towards her. Her hands were clenched into fists, but that wasn’t who she was. She was an open palm, offering, beckoning, and she had to remember that. The war couldn’t take that from her.

“It’s - it’s enough that you’re here.”

And he could hear it in her voice - the ways this war was closing her off for good.

“But  _ you’re _ here. You came to me. I didn’t do anything. And I know you have been hurting, and I know I can’t begin to understand all the ways you have been hurting - but you can talk to me. Let me at least - try to help.”

He couldn’t help himself. He reached out and curled his hands around her fist - gently, giving her plenty of space to draw away if she needed to. He hoped she didn’t. He hoped, foolishly, that this one touch could be something to sustain her, something to keep her going - but instead something frightened her, and all the bookshelves turned to ice.

“Ash -” he started again. There wasn’t enough time. He could sense the dream changing, sense her drawing away, but he had to tell her, he had to let her know that he loved her, that he wanted a future for the two of them beyond this war -

“Thank you, Lucius,” she said. “For wanting to try.”

And then she was gone.

And he woke, and he was alone again, as helpless as before.

Some of his despair at that feeling lingered with him all day. He must have been doing a bad job of hiding it, because Maevaris noticed it immediately when he arrived at her house for dinner that night.

“What’s wrong, hm? Were there protesters outside the smithy? I hear that has been happening at elven businesses,” she asked at once, her hand on his chin, tilting his face this way and that as if she could divine the reason for his melancholy just by studying him.

“No, thankfully. I think the show we made of taking Bas and Gaius out to lunch has made it clear to any would-be protesters that that business is under the protection of the Tilani family.”

“Then what is it? Is it still Rhea? I have a few other very suitable women to introduce you to, if only you would come to one of my parties instead of just our family diners.”

Our family dinners. It still warmed him to know how thoroughly Maevaris had accepted him - not just as her apprentice, but as another of her children, as equally loved and nurtured as if she had adopted him when he was young, and not as a man of twenty-five. He guided her hand from his chin and gave it a squeeze.

“No, it’s not Rhea.”

“So it’s Ash, then?” Claudia’s voice took him off guard. She was leaning against the doorway that led out of the study where he’d met Mae and into the dining room, where Lucius could already hear the chatter of the rest of the family, and Bull’s deep, booming laugh.

“What? Why would you think that?”

“Call it a lucky guess. So? Am I right?” Claudia asked, standing up straight and approaching them. Mae looked back and forth between them, her gaze scrutinizing.

“Solas and Ellana’s girl? Still? I thought that time was long past,” she said.

“You didn’t see them in the Fade together, Mae. How Lucius was giving her pieces of croissant that  _ she _ imagined for him and for me, when she could very well imagine some for herself, Fadewalker that she is.”

Lucius’s face went hot. “And if it was about Ash, do you really think it would be something to mock me for?”

Claudia raised her hands in defense. “Alright, fine. I apologize if I sounded too teasing. I’m just tired of waiting for the two of you to figure this out. It’s been too long.”

With that, Claudia returned to the dining room, and Lucius felt like the world was tilted. Claudia had been waiting all this time for them to - figure things out? She wasn’t at all surprised by this?

“She has always said that, you know,” Mae picked up, softly. “Or at least so Dorian tells me. Apparently the two of them had a bet going as to when the two of you would get back together, though the war has put a kink into that bet.”

Lucius wanted to recoil from the conversation at once. He was embarrassed, angry. How dare the people he cared about talk about him behind his back, act like his life was a game for their amusement. But Mae went on before he could say anything.

“For my part, I have always wanted to give you time to figure this out on your own. And I hoped, selfishly I’ll admit, that you might find happiness here in Tevinter. I don’t think you can have both, you know. Her, and the life you’ve worked so hard to build here. Have you thought of that?”

Lucius pictured his flat - barely decorated, hardly lived in, a mark of pride because he could pay for it all on his own, but not really a home. He thought of his work on the magic-powered printing press, and how that was something he could take with him. It lived in his mind. Ashara was the one who pointed that out to him, once, when they had the fight that ended their relationship. He thought of his work at the smithy, and that was harder. He’d truly come to enjoy that. Was it something that could live on without him? Bas and Gaius were capable, street-toughened men, but without his clear protection, and his connection to Magisters Tilani and Pavus, would they be safe?

Then he thought again of Ashara - both of her frightened and small in his dream, and of her laughing and smiling and stealing pieces of his croissant.

“Yes.”

“And do you think you could give it up for her?” Maevaris’s gaze was level, direct. It was the gaze she used when interrogating an opponent on the floor of the Magisterium.

“Yes.”

That answer came more quickly and evenly. So quickly it shocked Lucius himself. He hadn’t admitted that out loud yet.

“Good,” Maevaris said, nodding decisively. It seemed that was the answer she was expecting. “Then there’s just the matter of this pesky war. Fortunately, it does seem that things are progressing in the south. Your potential father-in-law has done something rather drastic to make it clear that the elves of Enasan will not go quietly, as I am sure you have heard. Dorian and I wish to discuss it when dinner is over. You would be welcome, of course.”

His potential father-in-law. Mae, in her characteristic fashion, was already thinking six steps ahead. He didn’t even know if Ashara would want him back, and Mae was probably already planning the wedding.

After dinner, he went into the study with Dorian and Mae, and listened to them talk war and politics. Not normally his favorite subject - two of his least favorite, in fact - but this time he found himself leaning forward, elbows on his knees, his fingers anxiously lacing and unlacing around each other.

“Sit up straight,” Mae said when she caught sight of him. “You are always slouching, you know. Trying to make yourself small. You’re not. Show some pride, Talvas.”

Oddly, she always called him by his last name when she wanted to show him affection. She did the same with all her children. It warmed him - but instead of sitting up straight, he slouched backwards against the high back of the chair, smirking at her. She rolled her eyes.

“She’s right, you know,” Dorian said. “Do you know, I didn’t realize you were taller than Solas the first time I saw the two of you together. You slouch just that much extra when he’s around, I’ll bet. There’s no need for that. For one thing, he’s going to notice you either way. For another, it isn’t going to endear you to him. Speaking of Solas - this display of his. Turning an entire unit of Orlesian soldiers and officers to stone - or several, depending on which report you believe. What’s your take, Mae?”

Mae twirled a strand of her hair around one finger. “It wasn’t a rash action the way some would have us believe. If he was prone to rashly displaying his power, I think we would have seen this sooner. When his daughter was missing, perhaps. And from what we both know of Ellana, she would not tolerate him behaving like that as his wife, let alone as his commander. And she has him wrapped around her little finger.”

“True. Although she did sound a little exasperated with him last time we spoke. That was weeks ago, though.”

Mae waved a hand dismissively. “That’s neither here nor there. Husbands are irritating creatures even when you aren’t in charge of an entire army.”

Dorian snorted and took another sip of his wine. “And Solas is irritating on a good day.”

Lucius bristled at that, oddly enough. He and Solas were hardly on warm terms, but Ashara adored her father. She always defended him, no matter her private doubts about some of the things he’d done. He found himself wanting to defend the man on her behalf.

“In any case - I believe it was planned, and I believe it was the right move. They showed restraint by waiting this long to use him, and by not simply commanding him to petrify the entire army, or to stalk the emperor’s dreams and terrorize him to death. It was a warning, and it’s the kind of warning that Orlais just might heed, if they force him to do it one or two more times.”

“So you think the war will end in Enasan’s favor.”

“Favor is a strong word, given the Chantry’s accusations towards them.”

Dorian gave Lucius a sidelong glance at that statement from Mae. “You wouldn’t have any insight on that, would you?”

Lucius sat up straighter, surprised. “Me? Why would I?”

“You and Claudia and Ashara had a rather - singular experience in Enasan, from what I understand. That business with the demon possessing Ashara. Claudia has always doubted that she knows the entire story of what happened. Of why Solas had to become involved and use so much ancient Elvhen magic. Why so much of the conversation took place in Elvhen. She said Solas seemed to know the spirit. And to me all of that sounds… suspicious. To say the least.”

Lucius tried not to think about that day much. About Ashara's mother snapping her fingers one at a time to drive a vengeful demon from her. Of how Dorian was right - there was something off about everything that happened. About the way Ashara evaded Claudia’s questions. 

And Ashara had told him, on that day that their relationship truly began, walking through the snow surrounding Skyhold, that there were things she could not tell him for his own safety.

“A demon possessing a mage is an unfortunately common occurrence,” Lucius said finally, weakly.

Dorian and Mae were both studying him. His face grew hot. Then they looked at each other instead.

“You’ve always suspected something else was going on in Enasan. I suppose soon you’ll have your answer,” Mae said.

Dorian sighed. “Indeed. At the end of the day - I trust Ellana. I would have pushed her harder on this secret if I didn’t. And because Solas loves her, and because he loves his daughter, and because I do believe he has changed - I suppose I trust him. But desperate times of war are exactly what led him to create the Veil in the first place, and while I’m rather glad he did that as it led to my existence… I am not sure I want him to be in such a desperate place again.”

“The rest of the Magisterium won’t have your forgiving heart,” Mae warned. “I suggest we begin putting ourselves forward as ambassadors to any potential peace talks that might take place between Orlais and Enasan, and any Chantry investigation. If our sources are correct, and their Divine suspects that the treaty that formed Enasan has been broken, she will call all of the original parties of that treaty to the table. If we want to help, we have to be there.”

“Agreed. I have already begun calling in favors and reminding people of certain elements of - leverage - I have over them. You should do the same.”

Lucius was starting to feel lost. Why had Mae stood there and spoke to him about the woman he loved, and then said that he should be part of this conversation? Then Mae fixed him with her blue-eyed gaze once more.

“That would be your chance, you know. If we go to Enasan or even just to Orlais for peace talks, you could come with us. And you could see her in person, and see if she returns your feelings.”

It was like Mae’s words put a slowly expanding rod inside his body - his stomach dropped but his heart rose higher, higher, higher at the thought of seeing her in the waking world. At the thought of standing before her and saying  _ I still love you, and I want a life with you, if you want that with me _ . His mouth was dry. He dug his nails into his knees.

“Yes,” Lucius said at last. “I will come with you.”

*

Even if the peace talks were still theoretical - the hawkers on their street corners still cried  _ war, war, war _ \- Lucius’s thoughts over the next few days were entirely bound up in them. Was he really ready to give the life he’d built up? The smithy was what stuck with him. He’d truly made something there, truly done something good - something that, in fact, honored Ashara and her influence on his life, even if he hadn’t told her that yet. What would happen if he walked away from it?

Then came the first day that his first magic-powered printing press was assembled before him, printing pages of the Canticle of Shartan at Bas and Gaius’s special request, whirring along without an ounce of help from any of the three men that crouched around it, and the awe Lucius felt was its own answer. Nothing could take this away from him. Nothing.

“There’s a chance that I’m going away,” he said at once, before his courage could leave him. Bas and Gaius whipped around to stare at him. “At least for a couple of months, if not - if not forever.”

“Going where?”

“Out of Minrathous?”

“Or out of Tevinter?”

The brothers had that habit of speaking over each other. It made Lucius smile and remember Erast - long dead Erast, the brother who never got the chance to grow up because of an elven rebellion gone wild. No - because of the men and women in power who tried to deny those elves the rights they deserved.

“Out of Tevinter. I don’t know for sure yet, though. But before I leave, I want to have a plan. I want to transfer the business of producing this kind of press to the two of you.”

The brothers stared at each other, their already wide elven eyes growing even wider and rounder with shock.

“I’ll speak to Magisters Tilani and Pavus about the necessary arrangements and protections. Of course people will resist the idea of the business being elven owned, and of course you’ll need their help making the connections necessary to sell them all over Tevinter - but I was never going to be good at that part, anyway. They can also help you meet with emissaries from Kal-Sharok to do the enchanting, if they need to do that as well. I want to retain the patent for the invention - so you can’t tell others how it is done - but you will have the sole right to make and sell them in the Imperium.”

The words tumbled out of Lucius’s mouth, and there was a hard edge of panic in his chest. Could that actually work? Was he really doing this? Walking away from everything he’d built, right at the moment of triumph?

But then he saw the giddy smiles on Bas and Gaius’s faces, and he knew it was the best thing he could do.

“Imagine that, brother,” Gaius said, giving the other a playful shove. “Business owners. Mama will be so proud of us.”

“Don’t let it get to your head. It’s big enough already. Octavia always said it was going to make you float right up to the Maker one day.”

They went on like that for some time, and Lucius stood there, staring in wonder at the press as it printed and printed, thinking of his father and mother and the printshop in Vyrantium that had been his home before his world fell apart. Now it seemed to be coming back together again. Even if Ashara did not want a life with him - even if something unimaginable occurred, even if something happened to her before he could get there - he had this moment.

Lucius Talvas was no Fadewalker, no Dreamer, but as he fell asleep that night he could not help but focus his thoughts entirely on her, and on the repetition of five words:  _ wait for me. I’m coming. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Prompts, suggestions, comments and general discussion more than welcome here or on my [Tumblr](https://buttsonthebeach.tumblr.com/)! Next time we'll go back to Ashara and Haleir and see how the rest of the war is unfolding, post-Solas and Ellana's decision to start telling people about the Veil.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope the length of this chapter makes up for how long it took me to write it!
> 
> Trigger warnings for: continued discussion of depression/depressive symptoms, canon-typical violence and general warfare, one or two brief, non-explicit sexual references

Ashara had never spent much time thinking about whether or not she would live forever. Her mother said it was because she was still only twenty-two, and all twenty-two years olds of all races were fairly certain they were immortal anyway. Ashara herself knew it was because her father never spoke of it. He prepared her for everything else about being half-Elvhen and a Dreamer - taught her their language, their history, their magic - so why wouldn’t he prepare her for immortality, if that belonged to her too?

Maybe she started thinking of it after the battles in Shalasan, after her father arrived and saved them, because she lived each day so close to death now. Maybe it was because of her friendship with Haleir, the first fully-Elvhen person she’d been close with who was also her own age. Maybe it was because of the rumors spreading like wildfire through their camp after Papae left, taking his lessons about drawing energy from the Fade with him - he really was a god, and he would not only save them from the Orlesians. He would make it so they all lived forever. He would restore Elvhenan in full.

“Blasphemy,” some elves muttered as the rumors swirled. “It’s all blasphemy.” 

There was a chantry in Shalasan, after all, and a young Mother with rounded human ears who baked bread every day and distributed it to every elf who came, regardless of whether or not she had ever seen them at one of her services. There were chantries all over Enasan, even a large one in the capital with a Grand Cleric appointed by Divine Victoria herself. There were elves who moved to Enasan for a better life but still refused to accept Papae’s revelations about the Veil, who would spit on him if they saw him.

But there were also elves who whispered about it excitedly, about living to be so old they saw the humans who’d wronged and beaten them die of old age while they remained healthy and strong. Of having time to learn and experience all the things that had been denied to them because of the shape of their ears. Elves who looked at Ashara differently now, if they knew who she was.

And so, as they waited to see what the Orlesians would do next, Ashara found herself wandering Shalasan and thinking about forever.

“You know, if you keep thinking so hard, I think steam may come out of your ears,” Haleir said one afternoon when he found her sitting on the ramparts, trying to imagine what it would be like to live so long that she would not only see the Dragon Age fade away, but the Age after that, and the Age after that.

“Very original,” she retorted, making space for him to lean on the ramparts too if he wished.

“What’s on your mind then?”

“All the rumors going through the army.”

“That we’ll be moving to Oruvun soon? That is the latest prediction, based off of the movements of the Orlesians.”  
“Oh - no. Although I did hear that one. I was thinking about my father. About the technique he was teaching everyone while he was still here and what everyone’s saying now.”

“That we’ll live forever? Of course we will. Why spend so much energy thinking about that?”

She turned to face him. He looked quizzical. So he wasn’t teasing. He was serious.

“Why wouldn’t I? I never really did, before.”

Haleir’s confusion only grew. He held up a hand as if to stop her from speaking further.

“Let me get this straight - the Dread Wolf’s only daughter, a Dreamer, a powerful mage, didn’t grow up assuming she would live forever? No, not even assuming -  _ knowing _ she would live forever?”

“Why are you acting like I’m stupid?” Ashara replied, her voice rising. “How many people do  _ you _ know who have lived forever, even with the Veil in place? My father  _ is _ abnormally powerful. Of course it makes sense that he is different than others. And there are - what - less than two hundred Elvhen in Thedas today who survived uthenera to be awakened by him? All of whom are full-blooded Elvhen who were born in Elvhenan itself? I hardly think it’s an open and shut question, Haleir.”

Now he held up both hands, placating. “Fine, fine. Fenedhis, lethallin. Atisha.”

Ashara wondered why he was leaning on their shared Elvhen tongue in that moment. To further prove his point?

“I’m sorry for raising my voice,” she said finally. “I just don’t like it when you treat me like I’m stupid.”

“I’m only ever teasing when I do. Well, most of the time.”

She rolled her eyes and looked back over the ramparts, towards the road and the forest where her father had turned so many men and women to stone. It was the closest to an apology she would get from him.

“Maybe I just didn’t want to think of it,” she said. “Because of my mother. Because of what that would mean.”

They were both quiet enough that they could hear the wind rustling the trees, snapping the army’s pennants against their poles. Ashara had to close her eyes against that image. Her own face, unchanging through the years - Papae’s face, also unchanged - and Mamae’s face ravaged by time. Her body buried deep under the earth, beneath a sacred Dalish tree.

“Ah. That is a difficult thought,” Haleir said, his voice barely audible above the sounds of the camp around them. “I had assumed it might be because of your man, too. Lucius. I always wondered if that was another reason my mother went into such fits at the thought of one of her children falling for a shemlen lover. How much pain that would bring, in the end.”

Lucius.

Ashara had been trying not to think of him since these thoughts began. Of course Haleir went right up to the wound she was trying to conceal and pressed hard on it, forcing her to acknowledge it. Again she thought of her own face remaining unchanged, sealed like a stone carving by her ancient blood, and Lucius’s changing, fading, and then one day falling silent forever. She couldn’t breathe at the thought.

“How would we ever know if it was true?” Ashara asked. “How could we ever know we were all going to live forever, as long as the Veil is still here? What proof is there, unless we wait and wait and wait to see if we age?”

Haleir shrugged. “I’ve been thinking about the lessons your father was giving. How naturally the idea came to you and I, but not to people like Tayana. She’s a skilled mage, and yet even she is still working to master even the basics of drawing sustenance from the Fade. I think that’s a clue. My parents have told me that such a skill is the first foundation of uthenera, and our ability to enter and leave uthenera is certainly part of our people’s immortality.”

And now, again, another wave of pain and illness rising from her belly to her throat. Of course her father would start teaching her this skill and never mention it was connected to uthenera or immortality. He would see it as a quiet gift, a way to calm his own fears, without forcing the real issue. And how had she never seen it before?

“Maybe you’re right, Haleir,” she said. She felt the weight of her despair pressing down on her. That heaviness in her chest, that sense that every time she had ever been happy in her entire life was just a lie, that knowledge that felt bone-deep. She was a fool, a worthless fool, and she had been denial to ever feel otherwise. “Maybe I am stupid.”

Haleir looked at her a long moment. He could no doubt see what she was feeling written plainly on her face. Another thing that made her stupid, worthless. How could she ever live forever, feeling like this?

“No. You are far from stupid, Ashara. You are naive, yes. Trusting, yes. You want to see the good in all things, I think. You want to pretend there is no bad. But none of that makes you stupid.”

His words were kind, and his voice was low, but she sensed an unease in him. He was shifting his weight from foot to foot, not really holding her gaze. It was like he wasn’t quite sure what to do with her, now. Like he wanted to just make a joke to mask that sincerity and then move on. She thought of what Lucius would do, in a moment like this. How he did not always have an answer for her - he said as much, last time they saw each other in the Fade - but he was never afraid to sit with her as the feelings came and went. To be a witness to whatever it was that pained her. He was never afraid of his own sincerity.

She missed him so much in that moment that her longing sealed up her lungs.

“Let’s go,” she said when she was able to speak again. “It’s time for lunch.”

*

At least one part of the rumors turned out to be true - they were moving to Oruvun. That western province where many of the awakened Elvhen had settled after the founding of the country - where her father had found Falon’Din’s orb - and where she herself had found Falon’Din. (Although, was it really  _ finding _ , if he had dogged her steps since Tevinter, and had only sprung his trap once she stood in his temple in Oruvun?)

It was also, of course, where Haleir had grown up, which Ashara suspected was why his mood swings became even more pronounced as they packed up camp and helped prepare Shalasan for their departure. Everyone had a hand in rebuilding houses and assisting the townsfolk with anything they might need. Haleir took to this with alacrity at first. An almost manic eagerness to be of service at all hours of the day and night. But that mania quickly dipped into snappishness, and then anger, and then outright withdrawal. On the morning they were to leave for Oruvun, Ashara and Tayana had to spend nearly an hour looking for him before they found him, walking back into the town through one of the newly repaired gates.

“You’re lucky we’re the ones who found you, instead of one of the officers,” Tayana said, one eyebrow raised, no doubt at Haleir’s haggard appearance. Ashara wondered if he had spent the night drinking in the forest. It was probably the only thing that would explain the dark circles under his eyes and the smudge of dirt on his cheek and the rumpled state of his robes.

“There’s a first time for everything. Even luck,” Haleir said.

Tayana rolled her eyes and turned to Ashara. “You may want to get him out of this mood before anyone important sees him. I’m going to go find one other wayward friend and make sure she gets back to her unit in time.”

Ashara sighed, not bothering to mask her frustration with that task. With Haleir’s increasing need to be as difficult as possible, people had also increasingly turned to her to soothe him. Just because she was his closest friend in the army didn’t mean she should have to be responsible for his every mood. There was something to be said about the second part of that phrase, in fact:  _ in the army _ . She found herself wondering if they would have become as close if there had never been a war. She found herself wondering how many friends he had outside of the army - if he had made friends in prison, in those long, long years when no one came to see him.

“Go ahead. Lecture me on how I shouldn’t have risked getting left behind, or flogged, or something,” Haleir said as they started their walk back towards the center of town, and the point their lieutenant had chosen for their muster.

“That sounds like more energy than I have this morning,” Ashara said flatly. It was true. The adrenaline of constant battle had faded, and she felt something like her old despair returning. That heaviness, that constant exhaustion, that numbness, that sense that nothing mattered. That she didn’t matter.

_ No, _ she found herself thinking each time it pressed down on her, like despair was a physical thing trying to drag her under.  _ Please, no. Not again. Please. _

She half hoped that they would fight the Orlesians again when they got to Oruvun. No large-scale battle had taken place there yet. The army’s move was a precautionary one. But if the adrenaline of life-or-death returned, perhaps it would push that despair away with it.

And when the war ended?

Maybe she wouldn’t live to see the war end.

That was almost a comforting thought.

Haleir was looking at her askance, worry creasing his forehead. He said nothing. He did bump his shoulder affectionately against hers. It made the corners of her lips lift.

“I should get cleaned up before anyone sees me like this. Here - let me use this well.”

Ashara leaned against the stones while Haleir drew the water and splashed it on his face, swearing at how cold it was. He stood staring down into the well for a long moment, like he was thinking about diving inside.

“They’re sending us near the town of Rallion,” Ashara said, trying to snap him out of whatever held him there. “Is that close to where you grew up?”

Haleir didn’t answer for another long moment. Then, finally, he pushed away from the well and started walking away from her, too.

“Close enough,” he said, like that was the final word on the matter.

They left by eluvian no more than an hour after she and Haleir met with the rest of their unit at the muster point. It was slower progress than their other journeys through the Crossroads, both because they weren’t being called directly to a battlefield, and because they were also traveling with a large amount of infantry as well. Instead of directing their magic to hasten themselves, those of them who were proficient with such spells sent waves of rejuvenating energy towards the tired soldiers. Ashara was one such mage, and the action made her think of Velriel, of Gwynne, of Tamaris. A mage with Vir’anor was supposed to help protect her companions as only a mage could. She had failed them.

_ No _ , she thought desperately.  _ We’ve been through this before. I did not fail them. What happened in Clermont is exactly what the Orlesians wanted. They stacked all the cards against us. It isn’t my fault. I am not a failure. _

She still felt heavy and numb, useless and exhausted. But she could push through. She knew she could.

As they exited the Crossroads into Rallion, one of the soldiers nearest to Ashara, one she had continually bolstered with waves of energy, sidled up to her. She was tall, and pale as milk, with big brown eyes that made Ashara think instantly of Lucius’s - a thought that hit her in the chest like a dart.

“Are you Ashara Lavellan?” the soldier asked, her big brown eyes flicking up and down, up and down, from the ground to Ashara’s own.

“Yes,” Ashara said.

“I was there on one of the days Fen’Harel - your father - was teaching us about how to take energy from the Fade. I could feel it, I swear, even though I’m not a mage. So could my brothers. They’re here too. Could you - can you do the same thing he does? The rumor is it can help us live forever, if we try hard enough. Even if we aren’t mages. Can you help?”

Ashara’s first reaction was another wave of that all-consuming exhaustion. Could she? Could she help? Could she help, and not tell them that she had no idea if this would help them live forever? Was there any point to telling them that, or would it only crush their fragile hope?

“Yes,” she said. “What unit are you in? I will try to come by after our evening muster.”

The girl - her name was Adaia, after someone special from Denerim’s alienage, she informed Ashara excitedly - gave the name of her unit and then sped off to rejoin them. Ashara fought not to regret the promise. She only wanted to sleep. But this - if it gave people hope, and if it made more people see her father as something other than a monster - how could she refuse?

The small crowd that had gathered by the time she made her way over to Adaia’s unit nearly made Ashara change her mind. So many people. How had she ever liked being around this many people? What was wrong with her, back then? No. Something was wrong with her now, if this was making her feel so tired. She liked helping people. She liked hearing their stories. She would find her way back to that place within herself.

“Let’s start simply,” Ashara said once introductions were over. “Close your eyes, and breathe deeply. Center yourself in this moment. Feel the coolness of the air on your skin. Relax.”

They looked so peaceful and so trusting, sitting cross-legged before her. They were hard men and women, broad-shouldered and battle-scarred, frontline warriors who had spent the last weeks looking the Orlesians and the death they brought with them directly in the eye - but Ashara was bringing them peace. Even if this exercise brought them nothing else - wasn’t that enough?

_ You can do this. You can do this. _ She repeated it to herself over and over again. What ‘this’ was changed with each repetition. At first it was just standing there, breathing, and not wishing she could curl up and sleep for a hundred years. Then it was just feeling at ease in her own skin. And then it was feeling happy, proud, connected, as she directed that subtle, vibrating current of primal energy towards them.  _ You can do this. _

“I can feel it!” The whispered, excited cry rippled through the warriors. Ears twitched and backs straightened and breaths came out in gasps as it passed through them. This was their heritage. Their connection to this most primal force - so deep, so ancient, that they could feel it even in this Veiled world. And Ashara could help them feel it.

_ Sometimes Compassion is a knife in the dark _ . Cole’s words rang clearly in her ear. She knew what he would say if he was there.  _ This, too, is Compassion. And you are both _ .

When Ashara was done, the warriors thanked her, pressed her hand, even embraced her. She heard them chattering excitedly amongst themselves.

“But how will this make us live forever if it’s just every once in a while?”

“It’s not literally going to make us live forever. It’s just a sign that we can.”

“I heard from my brother down south that Fen’Harel has been seen going town to town explaining more to people. Something about the Veil growing weaker. How we really will be able to live forever.”

Ashara’s ears did prick up at that. She would have to ask her father if it was true. She would have to ask him if he had ever done this for Mamae - if Mamae could feel the waves of energy, and if that meant that she, too, would live forever. She would have to ask him if he had ever done it for a human - because, yes, as Adaia said farewell, she looked into those brown eyes and thought of Lucius and thought of how if anyone deserved to live forever it was him.

That night she lay in her tent, surrounded by the snores of other mages, and she thought of what it would mean for her to live forever. She thought of the despair lurking on the corners of her mind, of her fear that it would never truly go away. Would she have to live with that forever, too? If she would, then she didn’t want forever. If this despair was never going to truly go away, she wasn’t sure she wanted to live for another year.

She slept only fitfully, trying to chase that thought away.

*

It turned out that they were in fact very near to where Haleir grew up. Close enough that one day, while Ashara was running an errand to purchase supplies for their unit, she saw a woman who wore Haleir’s face.

The resemblance was so striking that Ashara whipped around, awestruck, and stared at the woman without a second thought. It was the kind of behavior that tended to draw attention, especially given that Ashara was in uniform and had her staff on her back, so the woman noticed, and stared back.

“Yes? Can I help you?” she said, a little tartly.

“Are you one of Haleir’s sisters?” Ashara asked at once.

At the name, a variety of emotions flickered across the woman’s face, like shadows over running water. There was shock, and excitement, and anger, and then sadness.

“Everyone has always said that we look alike. I’m his oldest sister. Suhnae.”

The nineteen-year-old, the spirit medium, the only one who had come to see him when he was on leave after he finished his training with Eshne.

“He’s here,” Ashara said at once, with no thought for whether or not Haleir would want Suhnae to know where he was. “I am an aide de camp for his unit. He and I are friends. I’m Ashara Lavellan.”

There was another flicker of emotion at the name, of course, but Suhnae took her outstretched hand and gave it a firm shake.

“I see. I saw the soldiers and I wondered if he was here, but…” She sighed. “Things are always so complicated with Haleir. Sometimes even I don’t know how to handle him, and we’re the closest of our siblings, I think. He wanted to come home for leave all those months ago but when Mamae and Papae refused, and I went to see him instead, he acted like they were dead to him. We argued several times while I was in the capital visiting him. What do you think?”

The words on Ashara's tongue were  _ yes, come and see him _ , but then fear darted through her chest. Who was she to make that decision? Who was she to make decisions for anyone? Just because some strangers wanted her to help them feel the Fade in their bones, she should get to make decisions about other people's lives?

“He - he's distressed to be here, I think. I don't know how he would react, and if the Orlesians are anywhere nearby -” she was babbling now, she knew, trying to force the fog in her brain to lift, trying to force her internal compass to make sense of this encounter.

“I see,” Suhnae said smoothly. She tilted her head the same way Haleir did when he was sad. “Well - I'm here for another day gathering supplies and news before I head back to our family's home. If you can talk to him - get a sense of what he wants - I would appreciate it.”

“I will,” Ashara said. Her arms were full of her own supplies, and they were beginning to feel tired, and she was tired all over, and it was so  _ unfair _ that this despair was returning to her after she fought so hard through it. She walked back to their encampment, numb.

At least the numbness made it easy to tell Haleir when she did see him that night. There was no spike of anxiety, no debating what to do. She saw him, and the words came out of her mouth, stumbling and slow like weaving drunks.

“Oh - Haleir - your sister - she was at the market.”

Haleir froze in the midst of taking off his armor.

“Which one?” he said, still not moving.

“Suhnae.”

“Fuck.”

When he did move, he was a flurry. His armor was off and in a heap on the ground beside him in instants. Then he flopped beside it, his arms braced on his knees, and his eyes focused hard on the fire in front of him.

“I should have just deserted. I knew there was a chance I’d see one of them here.”

“Be reasonable,” Ashara said. She felt snappish, frustrated by him, but the words still came out slow and thick as mud. “If you’d deserted you’d just go back to prison. How could that be better?”

Haleir pierced her with his gaze now. “Have your parents ever looked at you with real disappointment in their eyes? Real disappointment.”

He spoke Elvhen on the second repetition. In that ancient tongue, the word he used meant so much more than what it did in Trade. It meant a shock so deep that a person was now unrecognizable to you. It traced its roots back to the word for death.

Ashara thought of her parents’ faces and missed them deep in her chest.

“No. They never have.”

“Then don’t tell me what is or isn’t worse than prison.”

Now Ashara’s numbness was layered over with shame. It stayed with her all night as she lay in her tent, hearing a couple nearby having sex, full of grunts that sounded angry and relieved at once. It didn’t arouse her at all. It made her think briefly of Haleir, of how they hadn’t had sex again after that one time, about whether or not she wanted to. It made her think of Lucius, and her last time with him, and how she’d held him as closely and tightly as she possibly could when he came, trying to catch every tiny sound her quiet lover made in the back of his throat.

Could he feel that tremor of forever the same way the elves who hovered around her asking for lessons did? He was a mage after all.

Where was he now, and was he well?

She decided to find him when she went into the Fade. She did not want to know what he was dreaming of. She felt tired even here, numb even here, and so she just quietly drew Lucius to herself. She created a hazy impression of a cozy flat around them, but put little effort into it. She focused what energy she had on him.

“Is it really you?” he asked, frowning.

“Yes. Sorry. I’m too tired for more than this.” 

Even as she waved her hand listlessly, she added color to the walls, recalling his flat in Minrathous the last time she was there. Another prick of shame hit her spine at the thought that she’d done such a poor job with this dream that he thought she was another spirit of the Fade.

“I thought so. Are you alright?”

His  _ voice _ . She wanted to lean into it, wrap herself in it - its warmth and its softness like dark rich wool.

“Not really,” she said. And then, seeing the way his eyebrows drew together in concern, she babbled on. “I want to be. I’m trying to be. I hate that I’m not alright. I’m sorry, I wanted to see you but you didn’t ask for me to bring you here and dump all this on you. I’m being selfish. You can -”

“Hush.”

Lucius rarely interrupted, rarely told anyone to be quiet. He waited patiently for his turn, hesitated to speak up even when he really should. Even though his interruption was soft, and gentle, it startled Ashara. She stood there in the hazy vision of Lucius’s home and swayed on her feet, watching him form his response. She remembered how cold the wood floor was on winter mornings when her feet were bare and she darted out of bed to get them both something to eat.

“It’s okay,” he said finally. “It’s fine. It’s - I mean, it’s not fine. But I don’t mind. I never mind being here for you, Ash.”

Ashara imagined standing up on her tiptoes, wrapping her arms around his lean shoulders, and kissing him on the mouth.

She curled her toes against the cold wood floor and looked away.

“I like it when you’re here for me. You know I’d be there for you if you needed something, right? Do you need anything? How is work on the press going? Is there anyone new in your life?” She added the last question even though the thought of it twisted painfully in her gut. When she glanced back at Lucius’s face, he was the one looking away, dragging his hand through his loosely-curling black hair.

“I’m good. The press is good. I’m - I’m coming to Enasan. Or Orlais. Or - wherever the peace talks happen, when they happen.”

The world around them leapt to life, colors blooming like flowers all around them, with the force of Ashara’s surprise.

“Peace talks?”

“You mean - it doesn’t seem like the war is ending? Dorian and Mae said…” he trailed off. Ashara laughed bitterly.

“I guess war seems very different from a politician’s view than a soldier’s. We’re not actively fighting right now, but we aren’t talking about peace, either. It doesn’t feel like the war is ever going to end.”

“It will. And I will be there when it ends. I hope -” Lucius caught himself, and Ashara’s breath caught in her throat, and the colors all went just a shade brighter.

“Why? Why would you come to the peace talks?”

Lucius did not look away from her this time. His brown eyes traveled instead to each part of her face, his gaze almost as real as a brush of his fingertips on her skin.

“It’s just - time. Time to get out of Tevinter. The world is so much wider than what I dreamt of when I was young.”

“It is.” 

Ashara remembered when that was all she wanted, too. To embrace the wideness of the whole world, to investigate every tiny crack. She wondered where that passion had gone. What essential part of her had been suffocated in the months since Clermont, and whether or not it was ever going to breathe again.

“If you are tired, you should rest. Really rest. I know it takes energy to bring me here, to sustain all of this,” Lucius said. Then, quickly: “Not that I want to go, I just - I worry about you. Everyone who cares about you does.”

“Thank you,” Ashara said, savoring those words like a sweet on her tongue.  _ Everyone who cares about you _ . Maybe this was all she needed. That reminder alone would be enough to break her out of her fresh despair.

Except it wasn’t. It didn’t go away the next day as they drilled and attended meetings and heard of the horrors of the fighting here in Oruvun - the strings of long pointed ears hung from trees charred by fire, the determination with which small groups of Orlesian soldiers went after farms and homesteads and small towns instead of elven soldiers. It didn’t go away as she heard about how this made their supply lines more uncertain, and how that boded for them as they prepared for the potential of a larger invasion now that the Orlesians had withdrawn their assault on the main road to the capital.

“It’s all a moot point anyway,” one captain said. “Fen’Harel will save us as he did at Shalasan.”

Abelas shook his head decisively. “No. Relying on one person, however powerful, is not a sound strategy. High Commander Lavellan is wise enough to know that. We will use such extreme force only when it is necessary.”

“It wouldn’t have to be brute force,” the captain went on. “Everyone knows he is a Dreamer. Why not kill Emperor Villiers from within his own mind? Or kill every one of his generals, or the nobles who support them?”

“It is not our place to ask such questions,” Abelas said. His anger, as always, was cool. He had not survived millennia as the commander of Mythal’s last Sentinels by losing his temper, he’d said once to Eshne while Ashara was there. Ashara’s heart hurt to think that name. Eshne who was still in uthenera after all the energy she’d expended to stay the slaughter at Shalasan.

“I’d do it,” Haleir said that night at the campfire. “Go into one of the shem’s heads and kill them with their worst nightmares.”

“I wouldn’t,” Ashara said. As strange as it was to hear her mother called High Commander Lavellan, she was still her mother. If Mamae hadn’t given that order, she trusted it.

“Then what’s the point?” Haleir asked. He flopped onto his back. The stars were out. They were relatively alone - as alone as you got in an army camp. The others were in their nearby tent, and not out at the fire any longer.

“The point of what?”

“Being Elvhen. The whole fucking obsession. The awe everyone has for this dead empire. This place none of us ever knew. What’s the fucking point?”

Ashara used to like questions like this. She used to like debating, peeling back the layers of an idea until its very core was exposed. Now she was just tired.

“I don’t fucking know, Haleir,” she said. She went to bed.

This time it was Cole who found her in the Fade. Cole, sitting in a tree in the forest of her mind, idly kicking his legs, wreathed in butterflies that scattered as Ashara approached. She was never very good at climbing trees. Maybe she was never very good at anything.

“Damn. Shit. Fuck.” Each curse came out weaker than the last. Her eyes stung. Cole’s were unblinking as they met hers.

“You are good at lots of things,” he said. “Just not climbing trees.”

“I know,” Ashara said as she settled on the branch. Idiot - she could have just imagined herself up here. This was the Fade. Stupid, stupid - no, that was not a thought she should give in to. Why was she so bad at this?

“It’s hard, isn’t it? Being kind. Treating yourself softly. I know I think it is.”

Cole’s quiet acceptance and acknowledgement of her plight centered Ashara once more. She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the trunk of the tree.

“Thank you, Cole. I thought - I thought I’d gotten over this. That I’d learned the lesson.”

“Journeys are not arrows. They don’t fly straight. Your mother knows that. Up, down, over, around. She took us everywhere. She explored everything. She found nugs for me to play with, and places where I could heal the hurt. That was as important to her as fortresses, and darkspawn.”

Ashara felt the brush of Cole’s mind and followed it, and the scene before them changed, becoming the Hissing Wastes, and showing Mamae, Papae, Cole, and Aunt Cass as they trekked through the desert. They hovered somewhere above them. Ashara could feel the bark of the tree under her palms as she leaned forward to get a closer look, and at the same time she felt the hot breath of the desert air. Cole was right. Although their destination seemed clear - a Venatori encampment on the horizon - Mamae stopped at everything that might be of interest. 

As it always did, the sight of her mother when she was young - when she had both arms, and vallaslin on her face, and hair shaved close to her scalp - mesmerized Ashara. Mamae held her left hand up to shade her eyes as they reached a bluff, and Ashara saw the green glimmer of the Anchor in her palm. She lowered her hand, and Ashara saw that Mamae had no vallaslin after all, that Papae could not look her in the eye as she turned to give their party orders, that Aunt Cass looked worried and confused by it all.

“She’s so pretty,” Ashara said absently, looking at her mother. “I mean, she still is, but - she’s so young. It’s strange to think I never knew her like that. Papae has barely changed, of course.”

And that thought cracked open other places inside of her. This rumor gathering strength as it coursed through their country. The idea of forever.

“Cole,” she said. “Do you think I will live forever? Do you think Mamae will?”

The desert reformed, columns of sand rising up and shifting into tree trunks instead. They were still in their tree. Cole’s head was cocked.

“Yes. But why does that matter? Life is the same, no matter how long. Your father knows that.”

Cole was perhaps the wrong person to ask, given that he was a spirit. Maybe he wasn’t wrong. Papae did talk about how as much as the world had changed since he was young, people had not changed. There was an essential essence to them that time could not alter.

“The individuals change,” he told her once. “The whole does not.”

Her mind jumped instantly to Lucius at that thought. So Cole thought she would live forever. Could Lucius? Would her father tell her that it was pointless to mourn the individual, that she would find other people like him in her many years of life? Her throat started to close up at the thought. No. That couldn’t be what he meant. Lucius was irreplaceable. If she was going to live forever, she would end up living forever without him -

The sound of Lucius’s voice filled their forest. Indistinct words, but unmistakably his. Ashara wondered if that was all she would have left of him someday. A voice she could only half-hear. She would have this despair, this unbearable ache, this sense of worthlessness forever, but she would never have him again.

“Why would you never have him again? Fluttering, hoping, wanting to touch but not daring - you saw each other in the Fade. He says he is coming to see you.”

“He’s coming to the peace talks.”

“To see you.”

“He might not even come.”

Cole cocked his head again, the other direction this time. His pale eyes bored into hers.

“You should not push hope away. It’s fragile, you know.”

Ashara jumped out of the tree. She imagined a pond and the grass gave way beneath her, turning to water. She cupped it in her hands and splashed her face, trying to cool the heat in her cheeks. The grass rustled beside her, and Cole was there.

“I’m afraid to hope,” Ashara said finally.

“Why?”

Ashara stood, shook her hands off, and regarded Cole angrily. She wanted to tell him it was a stupid question. That there were so many reasons not to have hope. But she couldn’t. He was strong, and wise. A spirit who had weathered much, who knew the power of believing and hoping even when there seemed to be nothing else left. He was the only other person, Mamae said, that kept believing in Papae.

So instead of being angry, she was honest.

“What if I’m not the same? I know I’m not the same. What if he only wants the other version of me back? The version that didn’t live through Clermont. Through this war.”

Cole shook his head, his blonde hair flopping this way and that.

“You’re not the same. He’s not the same. Why would you want to be the same? You had to come apart so you could be different. So you could come back together - both of you different but the feelings the same.”

He said the words like they were the simplest thing in the world. Ashara wished they were. But even if they weren’t simple - she could feel the truth in them, smooth as a river stone. Something to turn over and over in her hand, to memorize the shape of.  _ We had to come apart so we could be different. _

“Thank you, Cole. I know you must have things you need to do. Places to go. Other people to see.”

“Yes. But I like coming to see you. You’re very nice.”

His choice of words was childish, but there was something ageless and profound in his smile. Ashara embraced him tightly. They walked through the forest for the rest of the night, talking of everything and nothing at all.

* 

When the Orlesians came for Rallian, it was with every chevalier they had.

It started as an ordinary day. Ashara was looking through records, reconciling the amount of supplies they’d documented using with the strangely smaller pile actually sitting in front of her, trying to figure out whether this was a sign of incompetence or theft. It had been two days since her night in the Fade with Cole. Her despair lingered, a fog that slowed her speech and clogged her mind, but she could fight past it. She could accept that some days that was all she would do, beyond what was absolutely required of her as part of her duties. She was avoiding Haleir, as were most people who knew him. 

She was having a good day, overall. She thought she might have the energy to read the new book Uncle Varric sent her when her duties were done for the day, or to offer another session explaining how to draw on the energies of the Fade, if anyone was interested. She was going to call on her parents in the Fade that night. She missed them. She knew from the vague impressions her father sent her each night that he was out in the countryside, teaching, just as she’d hoped he would. She wanted to hear how that was going.

All of those thoughts and plans fled when she heard the panicked cries of the scouts. When she saw their bloodied faces.

“Chevaliers,” they shouted. “Chevaliers have crossed the border and breached the front lines. A hundred of them. Maybe more.”

“Move out!” The cry resounded from commanders all around as the word spread. 

Ashara did not hesitate to answer the call of her own. She and Haleir stood shoulder to shoulder as they listened to their orders. 

“Lavellan, you’re with Haleir,” Halamar, their commander while Eshne recovered, barked.

Ashara and Haleir shared a glance.

“Tarlan,” Ashara said. “I’m not an arcane warrior. I’m just an aide.”

“I don’t care. This is the highest number of chevaliers the Orlesians have sent at one time. We need every mage we have.”

Ashara wondered if this was how she died as they moved out. She’d thought she might die in Oruvun once, when Falon’Din took over her body, when she had to fight her own father and her own friends. She’d survived that. Would she survive this day?

“You’ll be fine,” Haleir said, as if sensing her unease. “You were always wasted as an aide de camp, anyway. Onward, lethallin.”

Everyone was in neat rows as they moved out, but that did not last for long. It did not last when they met the chevaliers on the field, with their thunder of metal and their yellow feathers already stained with blood. Their blades were silverite, their arms corded with muscle, their shields thick, and their minds full of hundreds and hundreds of years of privilege and prestige alike. They were the best trained warriors in all of Thedas, outside of the Qun. And their emperor had concentrated them all in one place.

Ashara stayed behind the warriors as well as she could, firing her attacks from afar, stunning and knocking back whoever she could, sending surges of energy to the elven warriors fighting to hold back the onslaught, but it wasn’t enough. Eventually she, too, was in the thick of things - in the midst of the dying and the screaming and the awful stench. Her Fade step and her Fade cloak and the quickness of her staff to block a sword were all she had to keep her alive.

_ Please, just stop, just stop, just stop _ , she thought over and over again as she froze and electrocuted the humans around her, as she sent bone-shattering waves of energy in their direction.  _ Just let it end, just stop, just go home and leave us be - _

“Where are the reinforcements?” was the panicked cry she heard outside of her own mind. “Where is Fen’Harel?”

They were getting pushed back, back, back by the onslaught of the chevaliers. Rallian had an eluvian. Runners had already been sent to warn that they were under a serious assault. Where was the help they so sorely needed? And they needed to form lines again, stop getting so fragmented. Where were the commanders? Ashara put a barrier around herself, took a chance to look around for the waving banners that would indicate where they were. All but one of the banners had fallen. Had the chevaliers been going directly after them? Everything was chaos. She did not know. Could not know.

_ I just want to live. I just want to live. Leave us be - _

They fragmented further. The chevaliers were like shepherding dogs, advancing under the cover of their shields, dividing up units. Ashara retreated with what she could find of hers, taking shelter behind a stone wall surrounding a house in Rallian.

“Where is Halamar?” one arcane warrior, Nimue, shouted. An arrow pierced her skull in the next moment.

“Dead,” Haleir said to the corpse. “Dead - Halamar is dead.”

A pair of chevaliers vaulted the wall, landing heavily beside them, shouting in Orlesian, and Ashara and Haleir and the three other mages with them ran, leaving Nimue’s body behind.

That happened over and over and over again. Safety, and then chaos, safety and then chaos. Rallian burned. No new orders came. There were shouts of terror as templars arrived. When they finally caught hold of a scout, they learned the awful truth.

“The reinforcements aren’t coming. This isn’t the only attack. They’re attacking all over Enasan, all at the same time. They planned this.”

_ You cannot be everywhere at once. _ The Orlesian’s words to her father at Shalasan.

Enasan had the mobility of the eluvians and the power of a handful of ancient Elvhen, but Orlais still had numbers, and they would force the elves to spread those resources so thin that they snapped. Mamae had redeployed a decent part of the army here to Oruvun, but not enough to stem the tide of what followed. Not enough to stop the utter chaos of the broken ranks and dead commanders and terrified elves fleeing from men and women who had necklaces of severed, pointed ears around their necks, and torches in their hands.

_ This is how I die, _ Ashara thought as they fled, she and Haleir. She didn’t even know where the others had gone. She didn’t even know where they were going. Haleir must have realized it, though. Something made him suddenly turn and hold against the three chevaliers who’d followed them.

“You will go no further,” he shouted as he launched himself at them, wreathed in shimmering magic, his spirit blade raised high.

The first chevalier’s blade glanced off of his barrier, and the second glanced off the barrier that Ashara hastily threw up around him, and the third buried itself deep in Haleir’s stomach. He made a shocked sound, folded forward over it, nearly forehead-to-forehead with the ornate metal mask that covered the chevalier’s face. Ashara heard herself scream his name. She felt herself rise, felt her magic flow, felt it explode out of her in a fireball that knocked them all back.

“No further!” she shouted, leaping forward, standing over Haleir where he lay bleeding.

The chevaliers pulled themselves to their feet, and Ashara planted herself, gathering her energy for another spell.

It was less of a surprise than it should have been, seeing the puff of dark smoke that heralded Cole’s arrival, seeing Cole bury a dagger right in the weak place between the plates of one chevalier’s armor, seeing the gout of blood burst upward from that point. It was less of a surprise than it should have been, the hard shock that traveled up her own arm when she buried her staff’s blade in the neck of the other chevalier, as his weight fell forward onto that blade. Her arm was briefly numb. She staggered.

“Look!” Cole shouted, throwing a dagger past Ashara’s face. She turned, and saw Cole’s dagger miss - saw the chevalier’s sword as it came down towards her left shoulder - came down fast, too fast, her staff was still buried in the other chevalier, she couldn’t parry -

The pain was searing, blinding, all encompassing. She fell. She knew she was screaming but she couldn’t feel the scream in her own throat. She could only feel the place where her shoulder had been cut in half. The chevalier raised the blade again, slashed down, slashed open her stomach, and Ashara had never known such agony in her life. 

The chevalier raised the blade again - but Cole reappeared, parried the strike, and buried both his daggers in the chevalier’s chest, cleaving the silverite breastplate like it was so much paper.

Ashara was lightheaded. She couldn’t focus on Cole’s face as he leaned over her. She felt cold. She felt like she could not move or breathe. She felt the warmth of her own blood on her neck and in her hair and on her belly. Her right hand scrabbled at her left shoulder, as if she could push it back together again. She did not dare look down towards her stomach. She could feel the air on things that should never have been exposed. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe.

“Be still,” Cole was saying, over and over. “Be still. Remember. Remember what your father taught you. Seek the Fade and pull it into yourself. Drink it in, water from a spring that never dries. Be still.”

Ashara’s breaths were panicked, shallow, and still not enough to fill her lungs. She was bleeding out. She was dying. Cole was right. She needed the Fade. She threw open her connection and felt it flood her with all its energies and memories. She was weak and they were many. She was bleeding, and they were strong. But she was well practiced at sorting through them. Even as she lost consciousness, she found the oldest, quietest refrain in that cacophony. The one she’d been teaching other elves to find. She clung to it as darkness fell.

*

Ashara woke to an underwater feeling. She could see lights and shapes and shadows on the water above her, but she could not swim up to them. Except - she was completely dry. She was not underwater. She just could not move, could not speak.

She was in the Fade, she realized eventually. There was no time here, so she could not say how long it was. But she did recognize the wash of magic. That’s all she was - magic. Spirit. She had no body.

But - if it was the Fade, why couldn’t she shape it? Why couldn’t she move through it, interact with it? She watched the spirits pass her like they were a play on stage, and she was a silent audience member, sitting in the dark, making meaning out of it all.

Was she dead?

No.

She could not say how she knew it, but she did.

_ You are sleeping, _ a voice said.  _ An eternal dreaming, but it is not eternal. A little eternity instead of a big one. Sleep on, Dreamer. _

An eternal sleep.

Uthenera.

Ashara slept on, mute, unfeeling. Safe.

*

Ashara woke again, and she was closer to the surface of the water. Close enough to feel the heaviness of her own body. This felt more like normal dreaming. There was still a kind of barrier between her and the other spirits and dreamers, though. She could move through them, around them, hear them, see them, but she could not interact. Curiosity and Valor and Justice and Rage and Wisdom all passed by her. Memories of Elvhenan passed by too. She could touch none of them.

Uthenera. She remembered the chevalier’s blade and shuddered. She had put herself into a kind of uthenera because she had been on the point of death. Had Haleir done the same? She searched for him, and she could sense his aura, but she could not find it, or call out to it. That gave her a faint hope that he had survived. The spirits of the dead left no impression on the Fade. 

She journeyed through forests and hills and caves and mountains and castles until she could feel her parents’ auras, and Claudia’s and Lucius’s and each of her aunts and uncles. Did they think she was dead? Cole. Cole would have told them what happened. Was Cole caring for her body, trying to heal her? There was a fire at her core, a will that said  _ not yet _ . He only needed to stoke that flame. There was a reassurance in that idea. She would survive. She knew it.

Ashara slept on.

*

When Ashara woke again, it was a real awakening. An awakening to cold hard earth beneath her back, and a cotton-mouthed dryness all around her tongue, and a fierce and awful ache in her shoulder and her belly.

Above her there were slivers of blue sky. Sunlight filtering through branches. Her body felt so heavy. So clunky and awkward after the lightness of the Fade. But it had a pulse that she could hear in her eardrums. She was alive. She was alive.

“You did it,” Cole said quietly at her side. “You woke up.”

Ashara tried to speak but it came out as a desperate, agonized, animal sound. Someone pressed a waterskin to her lips. It spilled at first, but then she managed to drink it. The waterskin disappeared, and then someone pressed the cold glass rim of a vial to her lips instead. A healing potion. She drank it. When she opened her eyes, she saw it was Haleir hovering over her.

“Right,” he said. “Let’s not do that again, shall we?”

Eventually Ashara was able to sit up, though at an angle, propped up against a fallen log. She looked down and saw the slash in her robes, soaked in blood, and the pink, ragged scar marring her brown skin. Her left arm was full of pinprick sensations. She could not move it on its own. Haleir made a sling for it, then sat back, holding his own stomach. The tale unspooled then, though there was not much to tell. They had both fallen, and they had both gone into uthenera to keep themselves from dying. Cole had hidden them, nursed them with the healing potions in their bags, with honey from nearby beehives, until they could wake up. Ashara licked her lips and felt the sticky sweetness all of that had left behind.

“How long?” Ashara asked.

“Five days,” Cole said. “Haleir woke yesterday. His hurt was smaller.”

For all that they had slept for five days, Ashara was still exhausted. She wanted to sleep again. A normal sleep this time. But there was not time for that, if they had already wasted five days.

“We need to find out what’s happening,” she said. “If the Orlesians have -”

She let the sentence hang. Haleir nodded.

“We shouldn’t stay out in the open, either. We need to find somewhere safe. Somewhere we can get news. And I know just where we can go.”

“Where?”

“Home,” Haleir said. “To my family’s house. It is not far. Hopefully the chevaliers didn’t stumble on it. Cole says he heard human soldiers passing while we slept. He did his best to misdirect them, but he can’t have gotten all of them.

“It isn’t misdirection,” Cole said. “Not when you’re sending someone home. I just showed them the way back to Orlais.”

Home. It had a lovely sound.

“Okay,” Ashara said. “Let’s go.”

Their progress was horribly slow. The energies she and Haleir had drawn on had knit up their wounds just enough for travel, and the healing potions helped, but they were still weak. Five days without food or water beyond what they had drawn from the fade, and the honey Cole had brushed across their lips. Where had he learned to do that? From Papae? From memories of the slaves who tended their masters as they lay in uthenera?

Uthenera. Dreaming forever. If she could accomplish that trick, then there was no longer any reason to pretend. She was going to live forever.

But what did that mean?

She thought of Lucius, of Claudia, of her mother. Nothing specific. Just their faces, and how she felt when she was with them. She had no more energy than that. She walked on.

*

The house where Haleir had grown up was masterfully crafted out of the roots of trees themselves. It sat in a hollow in a grove of ancient oaks, and was so well disguised that you might walk past it a hundred times and not see it, if you didn’t know what you were looking for. One huge root formed the backbone of the house, cresting the ridge of the hill it had been built into. Several smaller roots came down from there, braided together through magic, to form the walls. It was the sort of spell Dalish Keepers still knew, an old nature magic that the Circles hadn’t preserved. Ashara remembered that Haleir’s parents had been devoted to Sylaise back in Elvhenan, and it showed in every tiny detail of their home, even from the outside - the carvings on the wood, the careful braiding of the roots, the single stained glass window by the front door.

Even though she remembered that, it was a shock to see a woman answer the door with Sylaise’s vallaslin over her right eye. The woman took a deep breath.

“Haleir,” she said, tonelessly.

“Mamae,” Haleir said in return, cautiously.

“I’m Cole,” Cole said.

“Who is it?” Came a small, childish voice. A girl no older than ten pushed her way past Haleir’s mother, then gasped. “Haleir!”

She flung herself at Haleir, who cried out at once, and clutched his stomach when his sister withdrew.

“Careful, little bird. Your big brother isn’t feeling very well.”

Haleir’s mother’s eyes widened as she took in, seemingly for the first time, the blood all over their armor.

“Come in,” she said, in the same low, nearly toneless voice, though Ashara thought she saw tears brimming in the woman’s eyes.

Haleir’s family home was so quiet that it reminded Ashara of a temple. It was lit by magelights and veilfire, and the colorful light coming through the stained glass window. The rest of it extended backwards underneath the tree, into the hill, and so there was no other natural light, and very little sound. Ashara kept straining for some glimpse of the other siblings, including Suhnae, the sister she’d met at the market, but didn’t see them. Haleir, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be straining for anything. He kept his eyes downcast as his mother led them to a back room. A storehouse for herbs and other medicinal supplies, it would seem. It had a table in the center.

“Take off your armor and lie down,” she said. It was as if Cole and Ashara did not exist. She did not even look at them. She looked only at her son, who would not look at her. She was speaking Elvhen, of course. All of the carvings in the room were Elvhen. It was like stepping back in time.

“Mamae -” Haleir started again.

“Take off your armor and lie down,” she said again.

As Haleir obeyed, Ashara pinpointed what it was about the woman’s voice that struck her as so odd. It was not emotionless the way a Tranquil’s voice was. It was the quiet, careful control of someone who could never afford to be out of control, who always had to project a quiet subservience. It was one of the legacies of slavery. Haleir’s mother knew how to tune everything out but her assigned task, how to reveal nothing of what she was thinking or feeling. Ashara remembered Haleir’s question that night by the campfire, when everyone had been debating whether or not they should use more Elvhen magics and troops in their war.

_ What’s the fucking point of being Elvhen? The whole fucking obsession. The awe everyone has for this dead empire. This place none of us ever knew. What’s the fucking point? _

Haleir’s mother’s fingers hovered inches from the ugly scar on her son’s stomach once it was bare. She let out a wracking cry of grief and sank to her knees by the table, her face buried in her hands. Ashara looped her arm through Cole’s and together they left the room.

*

The rest of their stay with Haleir’s family was punctuated by similar displays. The whole house would be still as a tomb, and then there would be some outburst of emotion - joy or sorrow, confusion or anger. Eventually Ashara did meet the whole family. Haleir’s mother and father were Erdan and Valanthe. He was the oldest, and after him came Suhnae at nineteen, and then his brother Soveliss, who was eighteen, then sixteen-year-old Hatae, fourteen-year-old brother Syllin, and the ten-year-old twins, Leshanna and Thialis.

Ashara had always imagined that a house full of siblings would be one full of laughter and play, one that was never boring. She used to imagine what it would have been like to have siblings. She knew her parents had wanted more children, but had never been able to have them. But that was not what she witnessed at Haleir’s house. They had a strange formality, all of them, and an almost ritualistic rhythm to their days. 

They rose early, and someone started a fire in the hearth - whose turn it was seemed to rotate by some schedule Ashara did not know - and someone else began to prepare food for breakfast. They ate, and then the children had lessons at the table until it was time for lunch, and then the children were allowed some free time before dinner, and then there was quiet meditation and reading after that. It was a pleasant rhythm - but it was also completely divorced from the world outside. As the days passed, Ashara began to wonder if there was a war outside at all. Sometimes the younger siblings - little girl Leshanna and little boy Thialis, asked her what the world was like out there.

“Dangerous,” their mother Valanthe said.

Leshanna and Thialis shared an unsatisfied look, and then darted out to play.

The other siblings asked Ashara similarly circumspect questions - where she had grown up, what she kind of spells she knew, whether or not she was a Dreamer, what her parents were like, how many siblings she had - but mostly they just studied her from a distance while going about their normal activities. They studied Cole from a distance too, when he was around, although he was mostly staying in the Fade now that they were safe. Ashara got the distinct impression that they were interrupting a cycle that had been going on for years, self-contained as water in a sealed jar.

Haleir, too, seemed to sit outside of the cycle, though his siblings frequently made room for him in it. They left space for him at the table at meals and during their studies and told him where they were going for their free time, an invitation implicit in their tone. Leshanna and Thialis were especially enamored of him, and often tried to hang off his arms, despite his protests that he was hurt.

Though it was quiet household, it was not a cold one. Erdan and Valanthe trailed affectionate hands across each of their children whenever they passed them - with the notable exception of Haleir, whom they eyed warily, and with a sort of unnameable longing. They often held each other’s hands. Erdan and Valanthe called each other  _ vhenan _ , just like Ashara’s parents, and even called their children  _ da’vhenan _ from time to time, just as her parents still called her. But for every moment that they reminded her of her parents, there were three others where they didn’t. 

Erdan had the same cautious reserve as his bondmate. The same vallaslin over his right eye. He, too, had been a slave. He was the one who asked her about her father on the second day they stayed there. Ashara had just woken and come to the table in the central room of the house, and was sitting hunched over her bowl of warm oats and sweet syrup (no one else in the house hunched, she noticed) when he spoke.

“Your father is the Dread Wolf?” His intonation went up on the end, even if it wasn’t really a question.

“Yes,” she replied. Her gut ached where it had been slashed open. She didn’t want to be upright, let alone speaking to someone who referred to her father as the Dread Wolf. Someone whose two baby girls had died in long ago Elvhenan because of a war her father started.

“Do you look like him?”

The way he phrased it in Elvhen was archaic, something more like  _ is the seed true to its roots? _ Ashara nodded.

“Yes. But he’s very pale. And bald.” Her own Elvhen carried the northern accent of her father - or so she’d been told - but used the more informal conjugations of Dalish speakers. Ashara wondered if that was why Erdan waited so long to respond.

“I see. I never saw him, in Elvhenan. I knew of him only from the tales.”

That was the end of it. Erdan let her finish eating, then cleaned her bowl in silence, with a quick and practiced flick of his wrist to summon the water from the Fade and to sluice the dried oats away.

They learned from Suhnae, who had ventured out the night they arrived, that the war went on, but Enasan’s forces were holding. The Dread Wolf had been sighted at several battlefields, including there in Oruvun. The elven forces had moved away from traditional warfare and into smaller, more tactical strikes. They were whittling the Orlesian forces down one at a time.

Valanthe’s lips were twisted in disappointment as her daughter relayed this news. She shook her head and looked out the stained glass window.

“It is always the same,” she said. “The pointlessness of war.”

It was the sort of thing older Elvhen were given to, Ashara knew. These brief statements that carried with them the weight of centuries. So why, again, did it feel foreign? What was so strange about being in Haleir’s house? Was it that she could barely sleep for the memory of the chevalier who had nearly killed her, for the memory of uthenera and the now certain knowledge that she would live forever? Was it that Haleir himself seemed to be a totally different person - slinking and quiet and ashamed? Was it the suddenness of her transition from the noisy terror of war to a quiet family home? Some lingering effect of uthenera that made her feel like she might be dead after all?

Ashara realized what it was on her third night staying there. It was the absence of her mother.

She realized it because she had just enough energy to enter her mother’s dream that night, to hold her tightly in her arms.

“Are you eating enough? You need to eat. Lots of red meat, if you can get it, to keep up your strength. Are you changing your bandages? You need to rest. We will win this war. You have done enough,” Mamae said fiercely, her voice thick with tears, her words tumbling out like a waterfall. 

Cole had confirmed that he told her parents she was alive, that she had managed to save herself through uthenera. Ashara didn’t need to tell them the whole story. So she let herself slip back into dreamless sleep after that brief exchange, knowing that there was nothing else either of them could do. When she woke, she reflected on what it was about her mother that seemed to be missing in Haleir’s house. She went out into the central room and watched as Valanthe went from one of her children to the next as they sat around the table, reading and doing their sums. Valanthe was graceful, but in an unearthly way. She was loving, even fiercely so, but she did not let that love show at all times, in all ways.

She was missing Ellana Lavellan’s mortality, Ashara realized.

The earthy practicality, the realism, the way her mother was most at home in her body and with her fingers in the dirt. The way her mother could not withdraw from the world around her into a private world of her own. The way her mother always had to help, always had to make a difference. That was what had influenced her father, wasn’t it? Ellana Lavellan was so real that she made everything else real, too.

And all of that was tied to the fact that Ellana Lavellan lived knowing that one day she would die.

“If you had the chance,” she asked Haleir that afternoon, when they were sitting on his childhood bed, having withdrawn to discuss whether or not they should rejoin their fellow soldiers. “Would you have liked to have a mortal parent? A parent who came from this time?”

Haleir thought for a moment. “I suppose. It might have made things easier. But I love both of my parents. I do.”

“They love you too,” Ashara said.

“I know. I wish I was equal to that.”

“You are, Haleir. You are.”

Haleir leaned his head against Ashara’s good shoulder and she accepted the weight of him. Everything was so small and so large in the wake of their near death, of their uthenera. Ashara felt mountains of emotion in that moment and had words for none of them. It was like part of her was still in the Fade, waiting.

*

The war ended, and it was time for Ashara to go home.

Two weeks after the concerted attacks all over Enasan, their forces had prevailed. So many Orlesian commanders were dead, and so many chevaliers, that Villiers had lost the support of many of his key nobles. The templars were no longer sighted among the Orlesian forces, either. He asked to meet to parley a truce in Oruvun, and Mamae agreed to the meeting. Ashara decided it was time to leave, to be there with her parents.

“Yes,” Valanthe said when Ashara told her. “Yes, it is right that you should be with them.” She glanced at Haleir, who was slouching at the table.

“I have to go too, Mamae,” he said, standing. “I need to report in. The war is over, but my duty is not. I will not abandon it.”

Valanthe looked at her son, her eyes once again brimming with tears. She embraced him tightly.

“Good,” she said. “Good.”

Once they were some distance from their home, Ashara asked Haleir if he had spoken to his parents about everything that happened. How hurt he was that they had turned their backs, and how hard he was trying to change.

“No,” he said. “But there, at the end - the way she looked at me - that was enough. I will never be happy to live in the middle of nowhere recreating Elvhenan like they are, but they love me. I know that. They always will.”

There was a calm stillness to Haleir now. No more manic energy. It made Ashara happy.

Returning to Rallian, and then heading to the site of the truce, felt like a return to the land of the living for Ashara. Her emotions took on more color. Her body felt fuller and stronger. She was herself again. She had survived the war. She had survived her own despair. It was time for a new chapter to begin. She did not know what that meant, but she felt ready all the same.

She felt even better with her parents’ arms around her when she reached their tent.

“Da’vhenan,” her father murmured against her hair as they stood there, the three of them embracing, Mamae small between her tall bondmate and her tall daughter.

“We all made it,” Ashara said.

“Yes,” Mamae said. “We did.”

They both had armor on - mostly ceremonial, but they made a striking picture. They looked regal, like the symbols they were, and not just like her parents. But the way her mother smoothed back Ashara’s curls and studied her, looking for malnutrition or sadness, was the one she’d always known.

“You’re so pale,” Mamae said. “Did you not rest and eat enough?”

“I’m not sure there’s such a thing as enough food and rest after you almost die,” Ashara snorted. She regretted the flippant comment when she saw the raw pain and panic that darted through her parents’ expressions at that. Their shared glance. But then they became soldiers again, and simply nodded. Both of them had nearly died many times over. Both of them knew exactly the kind of exhaustion she was describing.

“Come with us to the ceremony,” Mamae said. “I don’t want you out of my sight.”

“Don’t I have anyone to report to? I know Halamar died, but maybe Eshne is awake, or someone replaced Halamar -”

“You’ve reported to High Commander Lavellan herself. Isn’t that enough for you, soldier?”

Ashara laughed. It hurt her still-sore belly.

“I guess it is.”

Caralina and Ilriane had written a speech for the ceremony, and Ashara could only assume that they had intended for Mamae to read it. But instead, she chose a young member of the infantry unit that had taken the heaviest losses in Oruvun. He was tall and reedy, with the lanky strength so common to their people’s warriors. His gauntleted hands trembled only once as he stood there, feet planted, and addressed the emperor of Orlais.

“We demand redress for the wrongs you have visited on our people. We demand the respect that has long been owed to our people. And finally, we demand that you remember one single thing above all else.” He looked up from the paper, and met Villiers’ eyes. “That there is power in our people, and you will never take it from us.”

A ripple of murmurs spread through the assembled dignitaries like wind through grass. Ashara thought she understood why her mother had chosen this young elf to read the speech. The implication was there. He was not Elvhen. He was wholly a child of modern Thedas, Veil and all. And still there was a power in him that there was not in the humans arrayed before him, who had always fancied themselves his betters.

The emperor’s jaw tightened. Ashara had forgotten how young he was. How old her mother looked, with so much more gray in her hair. How old Aunt Cass and Aunt Vivienne had gotten since the last time she saw them. They stood behind the emperor with expressions Ashara could not read.

“We will speak on all of these matters further,” the emperor said. “History has its eyes on us.”

And just like that, it was over. They tended to their wounded. They counted their dead. They were back to their waiting game. The ragtag army that was left in Oruvun coalesced around the meeting site. Everyone’s uniforms were looser, and ale flowed and people sang and made love in shadowy corners.

“But is it really over?” Ashara asked her mother that night, sitting in their tent. She could hardly believe that there was no more war. So many weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks of nothing but war - and now it was done. “What comes next?”

Mamae sighed. “The negotiations. We will host them. The first time Enasan is hosting a leader from every single nation in Thedas. I’m not sure if I’m happy or afraid to hear how many of our old friends will be delegates.”

Ashara sat up straighter at that thought. “Are Dorian and Mae coming for Tevinter?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“Lucius told me in a dream. He said that if they came, he would come with them.”

Mamae frowned, puzzled. “That’s a long way to come for him. I didn’t think he was interested in politics. That’s more Claudia’s passion.”

“She’s coming too. But Lucius - he just said it was time to get out of Tevinter.”

_ He also said he cared about me. And, Mamae, the way he looked at me - _

But Ashara swallowed those words down. She didn’t know. Not for sure. And now there was the matter of her uthenera, and her new certainty in her own immortality.

Mamae gave her a long, searching look, her frown still set in place. “I see. I am happy that you will have the chance to see them both, then. But you have to remember what Dorian and I have always kept in mind - they are not of our nation, my sweet. They are not of our people. Even with as many decades of friendship as I have shared with Dorian, I can’t help but be afraid. The things that will come out in these negotiations - they may change the way some of the people we love look at us.”

“I know, Mamae.” It was a reflexive answer, almost childish. The same tone she’d used when she was an impatient adolescent convinced she knew everything.

Mamae sighed again, and crossed the tent to stand at Ashara’s side, and gave Ashara’s shoulder a squeeze. “I am sorry, da’vhenan. I never could create a perfect world for you.”

Ashara leaned her head against her mother’s stomach and Mamae welcomed the touch, moving her hand to Ashara’s back, drawing her closer. Her stomach was warm and soft under her tunic and Ashara closed her eyes, feeling truly safe for the first time in weeks, there in that small embrace. She felt like she was already home. She felt, as she still did every now and then, a rush of intense relief that she had been able to save her mother’s life. That she still had her mamae was enough, perfect world or no.

They packed up camp the next morning, and Ashara and her mother and father went home to the capital, to await whatever came next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ....phew. We are getting close to the end here, folks.
> 
> Thank you as always for reading! Prompts, suggestions, comments and general discussion more than welcome here or on my [Tumblr](https://buttsonthebeach.tumblr.com/)!


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SMUT ALERT! The first section of this chapter originally appeared as a prompt fill for Viking on my [Tumblr](https://buttsonthebeach.tumblr.com/). To skip it, go to the section that begins with two asterisks (**).
> 
> Potential triggers: PTSD symptoms in Ashara's section.

Solas did not have much time to spend at home after his appearance at Shalasan - after turning the generals to stone and seeing the worshipful gazes of elves who hoped he could give them forever. He had orders, after all. Orders to go out and start spreading the message of what they were fighting for. To finally peel back the shroud of secrecy that he and Ellana had blanketed themselves in for two decades. _We are weakening the Veil. It will not be fast enough for all of you. But perhaps, for your children- for my child- there is a chance._

He was still mulling over exactly what he would say. The thought of speaking those words aloud to strangers tied his stomach in knots. On his journey back to the capital, he considered going somewhere quiet to think it all over.

But then he remembered he had one order that mattered more than any other.

“Come back to me, Dread Wolf,” Ellana had said.

Who was he to disobey?

So even though he was dead tired, even though he had seen and done things he would rather forget, even though he knew Ellana had likely been through the same in the time they had been apart, even though he needed to check in with the mages who were continuing his work on the Veil and to continue planning where he would go first and what he would say - Solas went straight home to their little house on the outskirts of the city. He hung up his traveling cloak on the hook by the door, and sat down and began unwinding his footwraps, and before he was done, she was there.

Ellana did not even speak. She just sat across his lap and kissed him hard. The weight of her was shocking, grounding, perfect.

“I need you,” she gasped when she came up for air. “Oh, gods, how I have needed you.”

Solas clasped her against his body.

“Yes,” he said, as if that one syllable could encompass all the ways he had needed her in his time away.

He was filthy from the road and sore from his exertions on the battlefield, but he found himself caring less and less as she stripped him, pushing aside his woolen robes and the linen undershirt beneath them, raking her hand down his chest, biting at his lips, tearing open the laces on the front of his breeches and pulling his cock out of his smalls.

“Hnn - ”

The startled sound he made into her mouth at the roughness of her touch didn’t seem to disturb her. He was bucking his hips up as much as he could, anyway. Everything else had already fallen away. There was only Ellana - the way she was already jerking him, rolling back the foreskin and thumbing his head, swiping the moisture this way and that. She did not let up her pace. He swelled in her grip, so hard he couldn’t breathe.

“Haurasha, I will not last,” he gasped, feeling the pressure building, his cock throbbing and twitching and growing in her grip. She was still straddling his legs. He wanted inside her. He pawed at her clothing, ripping past buttons on her dark blue cotton tunic and baring a brown-tipped breast for him to squeeze.

“I know,” she said. She spit into her palm and resumed stroking him, full up and down, squeezing tight. “I want you to come. Make yourself hard again, after.”

“Ah - _ah_ -”

It was an easy order to obey. He swelled, swelled, swelled in her grasp, throbbed, and then spurted all over her hand as she pulled, pulled, pulled it from him. It was dizzingly good, being pinned down by her weight, her hand on his cock, coming onto her while panting and moaning with abandon. He was home. He didn’t need to think past the pleasure of this exact moment.

“Yes, yes, yes, yes, haurasha -”

She stood off of him, wiped her hand clean of his spend on the hem of her tunic, then pulled it off and began untying the laces of her own breeches. By the time Solas had recovered himself enough to stand and push off the rest of his clothes, she was naked, and bent over at the waist, bracing herself against the small table where they often set down correspondence that had just arrived. They hadn’t even made it out of the entryway. His eyes ran down the length of her body until they landed on the dark softness of her sex, just visible between her legs as she spread them.

“I need you,” she repeated, looking over her shoulder, her grey eyes desperate and pleading.

Solas pushed two fingers into her waiting heat. He breathed slow and even as he fucked her with them. She groaned and let her face fall forward onto the table. He summoned a wave of creation magic and directed it between his legs. He added a little spark of electricity, just enough to jolt his body back to hardness. He ached from the feeling - so full of his own magic yet empty of his own seed, and still eager to press into his wife and feel her warm and wanting around him.

“Now,” she said.

“Yes,” he replied, and held his cock steady and pushed inside her, first the wideness of the head, stretching her, and then the rest of him. He watched himself go into her. He groaned at the warm, wet clasp of her body once he was seated.

“Oh, yes, please, more. I missed you so much.” Ellana’s words were thick with emotion. Perhaps even with tears. He couldn’t tell. She’d buried her face in the crook of her right arm. He held her by the hips and flexed himself within her, rocked and ground just a little, testing the depth of her, as if he did not already know it by heart.

“More,” she said again, and now he was certain that the wavering sound in her voice was tears.

He moved in and out of her, long, steady strokes, building them both up for more, seeking the sweet places inside her. She kept asking for more, more, more, so he went faster, harder, rattling the table against the wood floor. He was sensitive from his first climax, almost too sensitive, but he still felt that cresting inside himself, that sense of coming to a precipice, getting ready to tumble over -

“Stop, please,” Ellana said, softly.

Solas went still at once. He pulled out of her and touched her back, lightly, with just his fingertips.

“Vhenan?”

She turned around, and she was crying, and he took her face in both his hands.

“It’s fine,” she said. “You’re fine, I know you’re fine, but I just - Solas, I hate sending you out there. I hate this whole war. I hate being High Commander. I want this all to be over.”

Though there were wrinkles around her eyes and grey hairs around her temples, there was something so earnest and young in the way she looked up at him. Something about her fear and exhaustion that stripped away every fancy title she'd ever had, all the power she wielded, and made her seem fragile. Someone he could- and needed to - protect.

“Emma lath,” he said, and drew her close.

She clung to him. He forgot how small she was, sometimes. She had a presence that exceeded her slight frame. He could pillow his cheek on the top of her head. She did not cry for long. When she looked up her fear had cleared. That was her way. She let all her emotions in and so they passed through her more quickly than they did through him or through their daughter. Ashara. Ashara who was still out there on a battlefield somewhere. He pushed the thought away.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I still want to make love, if you do.”

“I do. Here, or the bedroom?”

“Here.”

He lifted her and set her on the table. He had a warrior’s strength, still. She’d sent him out into the field to use it, but he’d rather use it here. He’d rather use it to hold her at the exact right angle so that he could slide back inside of her and fill her up just the way she wanted.

“Shit,” she swore, reaching between them to play with her clit, rubbing around and not on it yet. “You feel so good.”

Solas leaned his forehead against hers. “So do you.”

They made love like that, slow and sweet, until neither of them could take it anymore, and Solas lifted her and fucked her in earnest, pulling her down onto his cock over and over and over again. It was the best use of his strength he could think of. That and the magic he used to make them both come. She went first, mouth in a perfect ‘o’ of pleasure, her body slick and tight and pulsing around him, and then he followed. Tinder met flame and the feeling of filling her up was perfect as a flowering tree in high summer. He loved her so. He loved holding her in the stillness afterwards. He loved how she kissed his shoulder and nuzzled his chest.

“I’m happy you’re home,” she said. “There is much to discuss. But not tonight. Tonight is just for us.”

They were the sweetest words he could imagine.

“Yes,” Solas said, and he followed her to their bedroom.

They went to bed immediately, and reached for each other with all the force of old habit - not for sex, but for comfort. They knew exactly how to settle in for sleep. Ellana rolled onto her right side, her right arm beneath the pillow, her knees tucked in, and Solas slid behind her, his arm next to hers underneath the pillow, and his left arm draped over her waist. She laced her fingers with his. He kissed her shoulder.

“Ar lath ma,” she said.

“Ar lath ma,” he returned.

In the few minutes before he fell asleep, there was only peace. Only the gentle sound of her breathing and the smell of her skin.

**

“I have to send you out again,” Ellana said in the morning. Solas was still half in the Fade. He did not even open his eyes. He made a murmuring sound of assent and pulled her to himself again, clumsily.

“Vhenan,” she said, a little exasperated. “I have to go soon. There’s a council meeting. We need to talk before I go.”

Their idyll was over, then. On one level Solas thought it was a little sad that harried sex in their entryway and collapsing immediately to sleep in their bed afterwards was considered an idyll now, but that was war. They had to be many things to many people, right now. Being partners to each other fell by the wayside.

“I am up,” he said, rubbing his eyes.

Ellana sat up, breaking free of his embrace. She was still naked. He admired the softness of her belly, lying in folds with the way she hunched over, and the sway of her breasts as she pushed her curls behind her ears. Her expression was already flinty with resolve. He wondered how long she had been awake. There was a puffiness around her eyes that spoke of a lack of sleep.

“I think it’s best if we send you south first,” she said. “They are rural areas mostly untouched by the war, but it’s a lot of Dalish clans. Many of their young people have joined the army. They will likely be receptive to your message. They’re also most likely to have noticed the places where you have weakened the Veil the most, anyway. It won’t be as shocking. That will give you time to hone your message. Then you’ll work your way back towards the capital. Caralina should have more information about what exactly is happening with Cassandra and Vivienne and the Chantry by then. The further north you get, the greater the risk is that news will travel to the human kingdoms. The more information we can gather before that point, the better.

“You’ll also need to stay close to an eluvian, wherever you go. We may need to call on you again. I don’t like what they said to you at Shalasan. _You can’t be everywhere at once_. They’ll test that. But we can’t rely on you entirely, either, so I don’t want to just leave you with the army. What do you think?”

Solas thought that he wanted to bury his face into the hollow between her breasts and sleep some more, but Ellana was transformed. She was naked in their marriage bed, but she was High Commander Lavellan right now, and he was another of her soldiers.

“It is a reasonable plan. I will chart a course while you are at your meeting. I can also draft remarks. Would you like me to join you when I am done?”

“Yes. The first part of the meeting will all be logistics. Our supply lines in Oruvun are terrible. The Orlesians have been targeting farms and trading routes there on purpose. Abelas fears they will strike there next, perhaps try to weaken our forces and our people through starvation. I am redeploying part of the forces from Shalasan to Oruvun to try and counteract that.” Ellana’s jaw tightened. “Including Eshne’s arcane warriors.”

She did not say their daughter’s name, but Solas saw the implication in her eyes. They always tried not to talk about her when they discussed tactics and battles and casualties, but the thought of her always bounced back and forth between them like an unseen wind.

“They are a well-trained unit, with or without Eshne,” Solas said. “You are wise to redeploy them thus.” Then, after a moment’s hesitation. “She is well, my heart. As well as she can be.”

Ellana nodded, but did not respond. The thought was too painful. She had to be a general now, and not a mother. She rose from their bed and went to the bath, and began turning the knobs that would start the flow of water to fill it.

“Shall I warm it?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I don’t have the time.”

Solas snapped his fingers, and the water was steaming. He’d been too zealous, though - she would think it was too hot. He let out a breath and it was cooler. Ellana looked over her shoulder at him, annoyed.

“My power is not only at your disposal for war,” he said, perhaps a little more archly than he needed to.

“Thank you,” she said, nonetheless.

That was partnership though, wasn’t it? Not always smooth. Sometimes a little jagged. But they reigned in their annoyances - his annoyance that she would not let him take care of her, her annoyance that he ignored her wishes. She sank into the tub with a happy sigh, washed herself quickly. Solas rose, stretched his arms over his head, and found a loose pair of cotton pants to wear while he worked on his chart and remarks. She came to him in their study before she left, smelling of lavender soap, and kissed the top of his head.

“Ar lath ma,” she said.

“Ar lath ma,” he returned.

Then she was gone.

*

The council approved of Solas’s course and of his preliminary remarks. He set out immediately afterwards, into late afternoon sunshine. He left Ellana behind in the council chambers, signing letters to send to the families of dead soldiers. She smiled a thin-lipped smile at him before he went, but there wasn’t time for anything else.

Then there was the road again - just him and his thoughts. It wasn’t so different than his initial days after uthenera. He’d come down this way, in fact, after awakening at Skyhold. He’d thought to go to the Temple of Mythal. But in the end all of the changes he had wrought in the world - and the thought of how he had disappointed her memory - were too painful to allow him to continue. In those days there was nothing but him and his thoughts and his guilt and open road beneath his feet.

It also reminded him of those first days after uthenera because he knew he was about to stand before a Dalish clan and speak to them about something he had done. It was fitting, he thought as he approached the circle of their aravels, which were now more buildings than landships, with various rooms built onto them. It was fitting that he would start this next phase of his life, of his journey to serve his people, where he had gone so wrong decades before. Like brackets surrounding a sentence on a page. He was too prideful, too angry, too frightened the first time he wandered into a Dalish camp and started trying to tell them about the world they lived in. He would not be so this time.

Of course, it helped that they knew who he was the moment he crossed their perimeter. He didn’t seem like some half-crazed wandering apostate to them, as he had to that first clan. The scout on duty - a bored teenager who looked more interested in whatever she was whittling than she was in guarding her clan - did a double-take when she noticed him.

“Oh,” she said in a sharp, high voice. “Oh - you’re here. Damn, I -”

She scrambled down from her perch on a small wooden platform in the tree above him, a blanket tossed over her shoulder, and hurried over to the intricately carved wolven statue staring out towards him. Its six eyes accused him. _Why have you come here?_ Then the young hunter flung the blanket over it.

“Ir abelas,” she said, standing ramrod straight. “The Keeper, he told me to do that before you got here, but I - I -”

“Peace, da’len. The statue does not trouble me.” The lie came easily enough to his lips. It did trouble him. It troubled him that this clan kept up this old symbol of something he had once been, and yet was willing to listen to the man now. It troubled him that he was about to embark on another journey that would once again shape his legacy.

“Continue straight ahead,” the girl said, smiling now. “They are waiting for you. I’ll sound the all clear, so they know you aren’t an Orlesian soldier.”

“You have not seen Orlesians this far south, have you?”

“No, we have not. But we must always be vigilant. Especially with so many of the older hunters and warriors off at war.” The way she puffed her chest up and raised her chin, filled with her own importance, made Solas smile back at her.

“Well done then, da’len.”

The all clear was a high, trilling bird’s call. An answering call came from within the camp as Solas entered it. The girl was right - the clan was waiting, or at least its elders were. The children, as carefree as at any other time in history, were busy playing with sticks, and bothering sleeping halla.

 _There is a chance for them_ , he thought. _A chance for them to know forever. I will keep that thought steady at my center. I will let all other thoughts flow from it. They will understand._

“We are honored by your presence, Lord Fen’Harel,” the Keeper said. He was a brown-skinned man with long, graying locs falling over his shoulders, and bright green vallaslin. Dirthamen’s. His smile was kind.

“I am honored that you would receive me, Keeper Zaire. Solas is fine. I prefer it to that old title.”

A stilted pause ensued. Ellana’s messengers had said that Solas wished to come and speak to their Keeper about a matter of great importance, but had gone no further, not wanting to risk the message getting intercepted. They were all looking at him now, waiting for that matter of great importance. Solas took a breath.

“I am here to speak to you about the Veil, and what we have begun to do to it here in Enasan.”

Murmurs passed through the assembled elders. Sticks clattered against the spokes of an aravel’s wheel and green sails snapped in the wind. This was a point the council had debated on. Whether or not Solas should tell the whole truth - that they had begun the plan years ago, on purpose - or if he should lie, and claim that this was a last resort to save them from the Orlesians. He had insisted on the truth, and Ellana had backed him. Now he just had to tell it.

“More than twenty years ago, when my bondmate was pregnant with our daughter, I was terribly afraid of the world she would be born into. Elvhenan was not perfect. It was not anymore perfect than the world we know today. And yet for all its imperfections it was a place where our people were strong, and could claim every one of their birthrights - respect, dignity, magic, immortality. I was terrified to think that my Ellana would bring our child into a world where she was guaranteed none of these things.”

The elders were still again. The children played on.

“Enasan was still a young country. Slavery had only just ended in the Imperium. No one could know if those things would last. And I feared there was nothing I could do about the magic or the immortality - until I went to Oruvun, and found an orb, a focus of power, that had once belonged to Falon’Din.”

Keeper Zaire shared a glance with the man beside him - a slightly younger man with the same nose and the same long locs. He had Falon’Din’s vallaslin on his face. A brother, perhaps. The Dalish had been known to give brothers those paired vallaslins. While one part of Solas’s heart wanted to warn him that Falon’Din had never been a kind master or a good person, another part of him was glad for this potential connection. If they revered him, they might trust this plan all the more.

“I knew by this time how wrong I was to think I could decide the fate of all of Thedas, and so I never had any intention of ripping the Veil out entirely. But I knew that if I could simply remove this one piece of it - the piece separating Enasan from the Fade - I could guarantee my daughter at least part of her birthright. I could guarantee every elven child part of theirs. Yet that plan was too rash, I knew. Or, perhaps I should speak more accurately - my bondmate knew it was too rash, and she informed me of how wrong I was.”

Some chuckles, at that, but for the most part all eyes were locked on his like wolves’ eyes on a grazing deer.

“So we decided that we should weaken the Veil slowly, strategically, and over many years. That we should secure the dignity and respect our people deserve by strengthening Enasan as a nation first, and seek to restore magic and immortality second. I think it is possible that you have experienced some of this shift already, as far south as you are. The Veil grows thinner here every day.”

Now the elders were exchanging wide-eyed glances, nodding. Solas’s heart fluttered in his chest.

“Call the children over,” the Keeper said.

A chorus of names rang out as parents sought their wayward offsprings’ attention, and in twos and threes the clan’s children tumbled onto their parents’ laps or at their feet. They stared openly at Solas.

“He has no hair,” one young girl shouted, pointing. Her father quickly shushed her, his cheeks turning pink.

“Children,” the Keeper said, rising and turning so his back was to Solas. “Would you like to show our guest what we have been practicing?”

They nodded eagerly, squirming from their parents’ laps and lining up in front of the Keeper, watching eagerly for some sign. The Keeper held out his hands, palms up, and summoned two balls of magelight. They flickered and grew, and then with a gentle flick of his wrist, left his palms and moved towards the children. Shouting and screeching and jostling with delight, they reached for them - and Solas watched, heart in his throat, as they bounced from hand to hand, tugged on by the nascent auras of a dozen tiny mages just becoming aware of their power. He reached out with his own and he could feel it in each of them like a hot coal, glowing with its own potential.

The Keeper produced more and more balls of light, and soon there were enough for all of the children, and they were tossing them to and fro. Some of the older children could make the balls grow, or change color or shape, or turn them to balls of ice. They looked around at all of the adults, eager for praise and acknowledgement.

All of the adults were utterly still, though. Solas included.

 _This_ , he thought. _This is what it was all for._

“It is not quite all of our children,” the Keeper said softly. “But it is nearly all of them. More than in any generation in our clan’s reckoning. More than I have heard of in any clan. I have written to other Keepers and village elders here in the south. It is the same with them. We had hope - have hope - that it could mean something good for our people.”

_I am something good for our people._

“Yes,” Solas said. “It does.”

*

It was not that easy with every clan, every village, but Solas held onto that memory through the weeks that followed. Its brightness kept him steady until the Orlesians attacked in Oruvun, and Ellana called him home, and he was a weapon once more.

“I know you hate this,” she said, standing over a war table strewn with markers indicating the Orlesians’ multiple attacks. Her hand rested on a list of casualties. More letters to sign. “But our supply lines are weak. The army is fracturing under the assault. We cannot afford this loss.”

“I understand,” he said. He was standing stiffly at attention. The rest of the council was there, along with a swarm of aides.

She looked at him across the table. She smiled a sad, twisted smile.

“Thank you,” she said, and her voice was too soft for such a public place, her eyes too tired and too sad, and he ran a long slender thread of his mana along her cheek, letting her know that he was there. Not just Fen’Harel. Her partner.

He went back to battlefields, his mana no longer a slender thread, but an anvil on which he broke the bodies of the humans who would destroy his people forever if they had a fraction of the power he had. He turned back assault after assault, but they were everywhere, and though he was not tired, though he could reach deep past his own stores of power for the ancient force that was Mythal’s last shard, the Orlesian at Shalasan was still right. He could not be everywhere at once. He could not protect everyone.

And when Cole appeared to him one night in the Fade, while he slept fitfully in one of the camps, he knew exactly who he had failed to protect.

Cole did not even have to speak. Not here, where they were both in their element. Their minds latched onto each other with twin desperation, and images shot between them. Of Ashara, separated from the other soldiers, awash in flame - then caught, stabbed, slashed, bleeding, falling, _dying_ , oh gods she was _dying_ -

And then Ashara’s eyes flooding with blue. Not the blue he’d known since the first day he held her, but the icy, unreal blue of their people’s most ancient power.

Uthenera.

She was alive, but she was a young mage with no real, formal training in uthenera - in how to stay deep enough in the Fade that she was truly awash in its energy, yet not so deep that she lost herself entirely, in knowing how to wake - he had not protected her and he had failed her, he had not taught her these things because they hurt him too much to contemplate - because what if she couldn’t - his girl, his child -

“Breathe,” Cole said, his hand on Solas’s chest, everything suddenly real and solid. They were awake. He was sitting up on his cot, and Cole was really there with him, big pale eyes boring into his own. “Breathe, as she still does.”

Solas followed the motions of Cole’s hand. In, out. He forced himself to breathe.

“Ellana,” he said.

“Go to her,” Cole said. “I cannot leave them. There are still soldiers near the two of them. I must keep them safe.”

Them. Haleir. The friend she spoke of. He must have survived too.

“Honey and water,” Solas said, seizing Cole’s arm as he turned to go. “Brush their lips with honey and water. To sustain them. They are young - they will not be able to survive on the Fade entirely. Do not let them go too deep, either. They are so young...”

“And yet they are strong,” Cole said. “Young trees can bend in winds that break old ones.”

He was gone.

Solas sat on his cot, listening, shaking, confirming that the battlefield surrounding him was secure. Then he rose, dressed, went to the eluvian, and went home. Ellana was not there. She was in grand building that housed the council, asleep at her desk. He woke her, and cupped her face in his hands.

“Ashara is in uthenera,” he said.

He offered no other context. His brain spat the words out before he could consider the context. Ellana’s sleepy eyes widened. Her breath quickened. She rose from her chair, her hand shaking. Then she fell to her knees and he went to the ground with her. Her breathing was rapid. He could feel her pulse through her thin linen shirt. She screamed into his shoulder - a loud, angry, wracking cry, a primal shout. He held her. He was not convinced her reaction would have been different if he had given her the full context - that at least the uthenera had saved her life, even if it was an uncertain thing in and of itself. Her desk was covered as always in papers and maps and her shoulders were knotted with the responsibility of protecting their country and now their daughter was in a sleep that she might not wake from for a century.

“She was near death,” he said when Ellana quieted. “It was instinct. Cole is with her. He will feed her, keep watch on her, prevent her from going too deep. She will live. I swear it.”

Ellana was still buried in his shoulder. Solas ran his hands down her back.

“Sometimes I just want you to kill them all,” she said, and her voice was quiet and broken and defeated.

Solas imagined it. He could do it. He could tap into the full power of Falon’Din’s orb and he could crack Orlais in two and fold the earth in on itself and swallow the lot of them whole. And that was the easiest, least painful way he could do it. He could imagine others. But he could not imagine looking Ashara in the eye when she woke, and telling her what he had done.

“I know,” he said finally. “But that is not us. That is not the world we want for our daughter.”

Ellana still did not move from his shoulder. She was so tired. He held the full weight of her, let her sag on the floor of her office, utterly undone.

“I know,” she said. Then she rose, and straightened her clothes, and wiped her tears. She returned to her desk. “The best thing I can do for her is win this war,” she said. “And that is what I am going to do.”

Solas shook his head, rising too, and holding out his hand. “You need rest to win this war. In a real bed. And I have missed you so, my love.”

Ellana sighed, and looked down at her papers, and then relented. She tucked herself under his arm as they walked, and he sheltered her all the way home.

*

The war ended after the death of the last son of the Ghislain family. He was not a direct descendent of Vivienne’s Bastien - he was his nephew, if Ellana was not mistaken. In fact, Bastien’s closest living relatives had refused to fight, saying there was no honor in picking on such a small and insignificant country as Enasan. That branch of the family tree was all daughters, evidently, and his nephews had played this up. They’d hoped to win glory, to inherit the family estate and place on the Council of Heralds over their cousins. And they had all died.

That was when the Ghislains formally and officially denounced Villiers as a war monger, a pretender to the throne, and a threat to Orlais. When they rallied the other nobles who had lost too many sons. Solas had continued to focus his attacks on commanders and officers, both for tactical reasons and out of mercy - he would not kill the common rank and file, the poor men and women who were only trying to put food on the table for their families - and now that strategy was paying off. The nobility of Orlais had been to enough funerals, apparently. Especially funerals where the deceased was already encased in stone, saved for posterity not in a posture of victory and refinement, but of mute horror.

Ellana didn’t think she had ever known relief like the relief she felt when the courier arrived with news of Villiers’ desire to parlay near Rallian, the town in Oruvun where Ashara had last been stationed. Not even when she killed Corypheus. Certainly not when Solas surrendered to her - that surrender had been too fraught with a hundred personal terrors, a thousand unanswered questions that lingered after the soldiers took off their armor. No - the relief she felt reading those words was elemental. Indescribable. She wanted to crumple to the floor as she had on that awful night when Solas came and told her Ashara was in uthenera. But she didn’t.

“Good,” she said when she was done reading the missive. “Set everything in motion. We leave as soon as we can. Someone dispatch a runner to Solas and tell him to meet us in Rallian.”

“Yes, High Commander.”

Ellana closed her eyes when she was alone. Soon she could drop that title forever. Drop that title and run and hide somewhere where they could never force her to pick it up again. She felt a surge of guilt for feeling that way. She thought suddenly of Fairbanks in the Emerald Graves, and how he had begged her not to reveal his nobility. How he didn't want to give up his current freedom and anonymity, even though everyone who followed him was urging him to.

“You have a chance to do right by your people,” she'd said. “You can't turn your back on that. The Orlesian court needs men like you.”

Fairbanks had looked away from her then. His voice was soft.

“It won’t be as easy as you think, Inquisitor.”

Ellana wondered how he had reacted to the war - if he had seen it as an opportunity for revenge on the woman who forced him to assume his birthright. She wondered how many people in Orlais still thought of her as the Inquisitor who saved their country, and how many still saw her as the Dread Wolf's whore, and how many still saw her as an up-jumped elven rebel who’d forgotten her place. It was pointless to wonder, wasn't it? She couldn't control how they thought of her.

Ellana thought for the first time in months of the portrait in the Winter Palace where she and Briala had met to discuss Celene's sickness. How wrong it was.

“Aryn,” she said, calling to one of her aides. He appeared at once. “Send someone to my house. In our study there is an old leather journal full of Solas's sketches. The cover is green. Make sure it is packed along with everything else we'd usually take for something like this.”

Ellana decided it in that moment: she was going to give up political power forever after this, but that did not mean surrendering power over her legacy. She could rewrite at least one small part of how Orlais saw her - could put part of herself back in the narrative that they would rather forget.

Assuming that the peace talks went well.

For the first time in weeks, she picked up her sending crystal and called Dorian.

“Villiers surrendered,” she said when he answered.

“Thank the Maker,” he said, fervent in his gratitude. “Mae and I have made all the preparations. We are Tevinter's only delegates, but the rest of the Magisterium isn't happy about it. Somehow they have the impression that I am going to be rather partial to whatever terms you put forward.”

“I can't imagine how they would get that impression.”

“I told you not to stop sending me those fruit baskets.”

Ellana laughed, and the tension in her chest eased. “We'll get through this,” she said.

Dorian hesitated before answering, and that pause held the whole world in it, and the tension returned.

“We will,” Dorian said. “One way or another.”

Ellana clung to that in the days that followed almost as much as she clung to Solas, to Ashara when she saw her. They would get through this. She had gotten through many things in her life. Too many. This was just one more. They would get through this. They had a month until the peace talks. A month in which she could plan all the ways they would get through it. And then she could rest.

*

Ashara woke in a cold sweat on the morning that the Tevene delegation was set to arrive in Enasan's capital. She was covered in blood. She was sure of it. She was covered in blood, and her guts were slipping out of her and the Orlesians were laughing in her ears, and nothing would ever be the same again. The feeling passed when her mind registered that she was staring at the ceiling of her childhood bedroom, that she could smell smoked sausage cooking in the kitchen, and hear the rattle of her father's paintbrushes in their case. She ran her hand over her belly, feeling the ridge of the scar there. Her shoulder ached where it had been cleaved. She took a breath and let it out slow. Lucius arrived today. The thought gave her a seasick feeling - happy and frightened, happy and frightened.

“Vhenan, I need to tend to breakfast.”

“A moment longer. Be still.”

What were her parents doing?

Ashara rose and went outside to see her parents by the window that spilled natural light into the living room where she had learned to walk. Her father had a canvas out, and his old green sketchbook from his Inquisition days propped up on a smaller easel, and he was painting Mamae. He had the basic colors laid down. It was a snowy landscape. Mamae had both of her arms - what was this scene?

“The sausages are smoking,” Mamae said.

“I have it,” Ashara said, crossing to them, pretending that the greasy smell of charring flesh did not make her think of Clermont, of Shalasan, of Rallian. She turned the sausages over in their pan, and then, with a wave of her hand, deactivated the fire rune beneath it.

“Good,” Papae said. “I wanted to ensure I had the exact shading of your cheek.”

“You mean to say that after all these years you don't know the exact shading of my cheek?”

Papae smiled warmly at Mamae. There was an aching tenderness between them. An exhaustion. What had the war been like for them? Ashara would ask someday. She took the sausages from the pan and put the halved tomatoes down in the grease left behind. She loved this breakfast - a Fereldan meal that Cullen had introduced Mamae to long ago. Would Lucius look at her with such tenderness when he saw her?

She would only have to wait a few more hours to find out. She was going to meet Lucius and Claudia at their hotel for lunch.

For the first time in weeks, she let out her hair, painstakingly undoing every tiny braid, and then bathing and soaking and conditioning and combing them out. It was the work of hours. After, she studied herself in the mirror, wreathed in curls, feeling strangely unable to recognize the woman she saw. Maybe it was just that she had not looked at herself for any length of time since the war started. Or maybe she truly had changed that much.

Rattled, she set out for the hotel. She wondered at how normal the city felt. How little the paths had changed. There were more guardsmen than usual, and even some actual soldiers, all there as security for the peace talks. There were also more humans than usual. But the bakeries smelled the same, and her feet still knew exactly where to go. She was home, however rattled she felt. She had survived. She would heal in time.

When Lucius saw her, he smiled.

He _smiled_ \- a wide, toothy, ecstatic grin.

And suddenly Ashara didn't feel like she had changed so much at all, because her heart was in her throat, and her own lips were spreading wide, and she was nineteen and the world was new again.

He and Claudia had their arms around her before she could say anything in greeting. It was a jostling, awkward, friendly, perfect hug. Claudia was dwarfed by the two of them as always, her face practically smothered between them. They both held on even after Ashara started to let go. Lucius held on longest.

“I am so happy you are safe,” Claudia said, pressing Ashara's hand hard between both of her own. Her voice was more raw than Ashara had expected from her stoic friend. When Claudia reached up and touched Ashara’s cheek, and then hugged her again, Ashara felt the pressure of tears behind her eyes.

“I have missed you,” Ashara managed to say. Claudia squeezed her one more time, then let her go.

Something brushed her back - a touch so brief she thought she'd imagined it - Ashara turned and saw Lucius's hand returning to his side. He had a faraway look on his face, even though he was looking right at her. Like she was something he'd dreamed of.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” he said.

The sound of the restaurant rushed into Ashara’s ears all at once. It was like they had gone into the Fade briefly when they reunited, and now they were back in the real world. She felt hot, overwhelmed, terrified. She scanned her surroundings, suddenly convinced she was in danger. Crowds meant battle.

“Sit down, Ash,” Claudia said, pulling out her chair. Ashara remained frozen. She was in danger, she knew it, she just needed to know where it was.

Lucius's hand was there again, on the middle of her back, warm as the sun.

“It's okay,” he said quietly.

Ashara looked at him - really looked at him - for the first time that day. His brown, brown eyes and the hook of his nose. Her racing heart slowed.

“It's okay,” he said again. There was no pressure in the words. He wasn’t trying to force her to feel safe. It was a gentle statement of fact. Whatever was happening, it was still okay.

Ashara imagined him dying. The thought was there before she could chase it away and then it was all she could think. He and Claudia - they would both die someday. And she would not.

“I'm sorry,” she managed at last. “It's just so loud here.”

“We can go somewhere else,” Claudia said at once. “Say the world and we will.”

Ashara swallowed. Lucius's hand was still on her back. She wanted to lean back into it. Someday she wouldn't be able to. She tasted bile on the back of her tongue.

“I think so,” she said finally.

Lucius's hand stayed on her back until they were out of the restaurant and on the wide, tree-lined promenade beyond. Ashara unconsciously directed her steps towards the park where she, Papae, and Sylvio went a lifetime ago. Where she'd told him she would enlist in the army. Lucius and Claudia followed without question.

“This is lovely,” Claudia said when they found a bench to sit on. “All of the statues are so lifelike.”

“They are. I always thought they might come to life, when I was little. I saw the reverse on the battlefield, though. Papae turning people to stone.”

The words slipped out of her mouth casually, but she could see the horror they wrought in Lucius and Claudia at once. The way both of their eyes widened, and then how they both worked to hide their shock.

“I’m sorry,” Ashara said. “It just slipped out. I know you probably don’t want to hear about everything that happened.”

“Nonsense. You have been through so much, Ash. We are both here for whatever you need. Why do you think we came?” Claudia said.

“For the peace talks,” Ashara replied.

Claudia let out a long-suffering sigh, and took Ashara’s hand again. “Ashara Lavellan, you are both the smartest and the most clueless person I know.”

Lucius shot Claudia a warning look, but Ashara just found herself laughing.

“I should introduce you to my friend Haleir. I think you two would get along. He said something similar to me, once.”

“I’d love to meet him,” Claudia said. “I’m going to go look at that statue of Garahel across the park. Do either of you want to join?”

“I’m fine,” Ashara said.

“I’ll stay here,” Lucius added.

And just like that, they were alone together. The dozens of people around them did not matter. It was just them, and the stone bench, and the tightness in Ashara’s chest that came from fear and excitement alike.

“I meant it,” Lucius said, and for an instant Ashara’s mind flooded with possibility. “You can talk to us about anything you need to. You can talk to me.”

Ashara knew he was sincere. She could read that in the openness and kindness of his expression, the way he was body was turned towards hers. She could tell that nothing else mattered to him but what she said next.

She had to test it, she realized. She had to see if they could feel the ancient, sustaining energy of the deepest Fade the way the elves in the army had. She had to know for sure. Humans were scarcely mentioned in any records from before the Veil was created. Maybe they had been immortal and no one knew. Maybe they could hear a different strain of the same song. Maybe - maybe -

A breeze ruffled the grass and the bushes and the flowers and carried with it the scent of spring. Lucius was still looking at her, calm, waiting. Mortal.

Not here. Not now. It was not the time to test her theory. She just wanted to enjoy her afternoon with them. No more.

“I'm very happy you came,” Ashara said finally. “I know it was a long way.”

Lucius looked at her, and smiled. More softly than he had at the restaurant. Their knees brushed as they both readjusted on the stone bench.

“It was worth it,” he said.

For an afternoon, Ashara pushed aside every thought but the sweetness of those words, the nearness of him, and all was well.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Claudia is definitely hiding behind a bush staring at these two idiots and going "whyyyyyyyyyyy"
> 
> Thank you as always for reading! Prompts, suggestions, comments and general discussion more than welcome here or on my [Tumblr](https://buttsonthebeach.tumblr.com/)!


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter starts off with Claudia, who has never really gotten as much screen time as she deserves because I am an awful person. I LOVE YOU CLAUDIA.
> 
> If you want to read more about her, I have a couple of one-shots featuring her on my Tumblr! ["Family Ties"](https://buttsonthebeach.tumblr.com/post/172423056481/prompt-we-all-know-krem-is-tibs-son-and-krem) is from Dorian's POV and explores how Claudia came to be part of his family. ["Don't Let The Bastards Get You Down"](https://buttsonthebeach.tumblr.com/post/176574412931/prompt-claudia-is-ace-af-anything-gimme) explores Claudia's security in her identity as an aro-ace woman.

Most of what Claudia Naevar knew about people, she had learned from bread. Illogical to some people, but not to a baker’s daughter who grew up with the tang of yeast in her nose just as much as the salt of Qarinus’s port. Bread came before magic and politics - the other two things that defined her life - and bread was what she always returned to when things didn’t make sense.

“There’s always a pattern,” her mother used to say, up to her elbows in flour. “A plan you can follow. No matter what the problem is. What do we do when it’s cold out?”

“We heat up the whole kitchen and let the bread rise longer.”

“And when the bread goes stale?”

“We make bread pudding.”

“Good, my sweet.”

Claudia’s mother had been an efficient woman. She didn’t waste a motion as she weighed flour and poured out water or pinched salt. She was an exact woman, too, sharp-eyed, never missing a bill or a coin when she counted the day’s profits, always quick to catch a merchant who tried to shortchange her on the days they went to the market together. She never let them haggle with her, either. She knew what she wanted, and she got it. Claudia was in awe of that when she was young. She was in awe, took, of her father’s easy smile out front with the customers.

“How do you know how to make them all happy?” She asked him once.

“I just watch,” he said. “Most people tell you everything you need to know if you just watch.”

Those days were long gone now. Sometimes she found she did not remember exactly what her mother looked like, or how her father laughed. She relied on Ashara to conjure memories of them now and then when they met in the Fade so that she would never lose them entirely. But their lessons remained. Be exact, look for patterns, and watch people to learn everything you needed to know. Dorian and Bull had reinforced those lessons in their ways, too. Claudia missed her parents, but she was beyond lucky to have found a second set of them in the men who raised her from the age of thirteen onwards.

So maybe some people would have found it strange that Claudia was standing in a grand, airy pavilion made of green wrought iron, with a marvelous glass ceiling, surrounded by dignitaries from all the major nations of Thedas, and making sense of it all by thinking of bread, but Claudia would have laughed at their confusion. It made perfect sense to her. If the kitchen was cold, you heated it and let the bread rise longer than usual. If you needed the support of a key Orlesian noblewoman to ensure that the entire Orlesian delegation didn’t turn against you, you complimented her mask, and told her that the Lucerni still loved the wine they bought from her in bulk for their parties and meetings.

“Tell me, are we still your largest customers? We have always prided ourselves on supporting such a forward-thinking Orlesian family,” she said, smiling the way her father used to at a fractious customer.

“Indeed, you are,” the woman said. Her smile was tighter than Claudia’s own.

“I am glad to hear it. I’ll be sure to remind Magister Pavus that he owes you a visit before the reception is over.”

Claudia left. It was just the same as the bakery. Exactitude, a sharp eye, patterns, a winning smile. She was in her element here in this room where the fate of Enasan, the first elven nation since the kingdom of the Dales, would be decided. Lucius, less so. She was keeping an eye on him whenever she could. He kept lingering around the edges of the room, smiling and chatting only with people he knew, which were few and far between. Where was Ashara? This was a formal reception for all the dignitaries, the party before the talks began, and her parents had not arrived yet - none of the major dignitaries, like Divine Victoria and Emperor Villiers, had arrived yet - but she had said she planned to come before they did anyway. Ashara was the only reason Lucius was here. For all her attempts at playing dumb, Ashara had to know that by now.

Claudia was searching the patterns in her mind, mulling over the issue, when the slight, fair-skinned woman in Chantry regalia approached her with a deferent bow.

“Madame Naevar?” she asked, her Orlesian accent heavy.

“Yes,” Claudia said, straightening her posture.

“Your presence is required by Most Holy.”

“Divine Victoria?”

“There is no other who can rightfully claim that title,” she said, stiffly. Oh, of course. She must have heard where Claudia was from, and wanted to get her dig in at the so-called Black Divine. Claudia resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

“Very well. Take me to her,” she said.

Claudia passed through the rustling gowns and clinking glasses and the occasional echoing jangle of a soldier’s armor. She noted the change in atmosphere as she left the pavilion and headed into the equally grand building behind it, which housed Enasan’s ruling council. It went from celebratory to somber. Just as she had once watched the consistency of dough to make sure it was neither too wet nor too dry, had once felt water with the back of her hand to make sure it wasn’t so hot it would kill the yeast, she noted both people in the room, and what their expressions were.

The first person was a dark-skinned woman she could only assume was the Grand Enchanter of the south’s remaining Circles, who had the carefully impassive face of a lifelong courtier. There was also a paler woman with a prominent scar on her cheek and the seal of the southern Chantry - was that Divine Victoria herself? She did not look at all the way Claudia had imagined. She was old, yes, but she had a vitality in her stance, a strength in the square of her shoulders, that still suited a warrior more than it suited a priest. She looked ready to spring. Her face was equal parts angry and afraid, which was no surprise. Fear was so often what sat directly behind anger, in Claudia’s experience.

“Greetings, my ladies. I did not think I would be honored with such esteemed company today,” Claudia said, bowing at the waist. That part was all Dorian’s teaching. Her careful assessment of the room - of the potential for hidden listeners, traps, and guards - was all Bull’s. It truly did seem that they were alone. Then again, considering that they were formidable in their own right, perhaps they felt they needed no guard. Claudia could feel the power rolling off of the Grand Enchanter in waves. No doubt that was intentional.

“You are Claudia Naevar? Dorian’s - Magister Pavus’s apprentice?” Divine Victoria asked. Her Nevarran accent was still thick, even after decades spent in the south.

“Indeed, although I am no longer his apprentice. I attained the rank of Enchanter two years ago, and now serve as a junior member of the Magisterium.”

“Well done,” the Grand Enchanter said. Claudia thought back to Ashara’s stories of her parents’ time in the Inquisition, struggling to recall her name. Ah - Vivienne de Fer. Closely associated with the Ghislain family of Orlais. “Although we are more interested in the year you attained the rank of Enchanter than we are in your current politics. Please, have a seat.”

That was the first moment that Claudia felt at sea since she arrived in Enasan. Being surrounded by elves, by the elven language, by half a dozen other languages besides, by the ethereal beauty of the Arbor Wilds - none of that had phased her. But this - sitting across from two of the most powerful women in Thedas, with no idea of why they would want to talk to her about the year she became an Enchanter - this she could not immediately fathom. She smoothed her pants over and over as she sat, then caught herself.

_No weakness, Naevar._

“You have been this far south before, yes?” Madame de Fer went on. “The year that you became an Enchanter, if I am not mistaken.”

“Yes.”

“ _This_ far south? All the way to Enasan?” Divine Victoria asked.

Claudia’s heart sped up. Now she knew what they were asking about. They were asking about the temple. The place where Ashara had nearly become a monster. The place she still had nightmares about.

“No,” Claudia said. “Not to Enasan. We didn’t go further south than Skyhold, in the Frostback Mountains.”

“We are well aware of where Skyhold is,” Madame de Fer said crisply. “You were at Skyhold in the company of Ashara Lavellan, were you not? And assisting her in searching for a cure to a mysterious illness plaguing her mother?”

“Yes,” Claudia said. She would not elaborate further. She was afraid of what all of this could mean, but she was no longer at sea. This was just another political battleground. They held the upper hand. They had asked her here. But she would not give them another inch unless she had to.

“Let us speak plainly,” Divine Victoria said, leaning forward. A twitch of irritation passed over the Grand Enchanter’s lips. She was a cat who wanted to keep playing with her mouse; Divine Victoria was a bloodhound on the scent. “I am sure you know that very serious accusations have been brought against Enasan. In particular against High Commander Lavellan and her husband, Solas.”

“I know they are serious,” Claudia said. “But I don’t know what they are.”

It was her first bald-faced lie in the conversation. She knew precisely what they were. Dorian had been turning them over and over for months. Years, really. Claudia had told Dorian everything when she returned to Minrathous after helping to save Ellana’s life. She’d told him about Ashara being possessed by a spirit who spoke Elvhen, who lived in an ancient temple dripping in necromantic energy and dedicated to the elven god of the dead, who seemed to know Solas. She told him how this spirit somehow gave Ashara the knowledge to draw the corrupted magic from her mother’s blood directly.

Ellana and Solas had said that it was an ancient spirit, that the only reason the Veil was weak enough for it to cross was because of the resurgence in ancient magical techniques being practiced in Enasan. Dorian had shaken his head at once.

“The only thing I can think is that it was one of the Evanuris. That it was Falon’Din himself,” Dorian had said when her story was done. “And the only way that could be true would be if -”

He had looked away from her, but she still caught the look of mingled horror and grief on his face.

“If?” Claudia had prompted.

Dorian had shaken his head. “I don’t want to think about it. I only want to be happy that my friend is safe.”

But he was a magister, and so he’d had to think about it, and she’d had to think about it too. She’d had to look at Ellana and Solas as politicians, think of Enasan not as Ashara’s treasured homeland but as a tiny country willing to do anything to survive. It was difficult. It made her angry. It made her afraid. She knew what Claudia-the-politician believed - that it was likely that they did have power like that at their disposal, and that such power was too dangerous for anyone, and that it should be crushed. And yet she also knew what Claudia-the-person believed - that Ashara and her parents were good people. That the elves deserved a homeland. That they had the right to defend it against the people who would try to take it away.

Now was no longer the time for just thinking about it. Claudia was as sure of that as she was of the perfect, hollow sound a good loaf of bread made when you tapped on the bottom of it. Now was the time for action.

“I am surprised to hear you say that you do not know the accusations,” Madame de Fer said. “You work very closely with Dorian and other members of the Lucerni party.”

“I am only a junior member of the magisterium.”

“But you are a close personal friend of Ashara Lavellan, who has stood at the center of so much of this. She has told you nothing?”

Claudia decided to gamble.

“You are dancing around a question, Grand Enchanter. You can ask it plainly.”

Divine Victoria took the bait, just as she had hoped.

“Do you have any evidence that would prove or disprove that the Lavellans possess an orb or a similar artifact, and that they are actively trying to weaken the Veil, in Enasan or elsewhere?”

There had been a time, not long after the events in the temple, when Claudia was raw with fear, and she might have spilled everything she knew. There had been a time when she was a brand new Enchanter, a brand new member of the Magisterium, and she was flush with her own new power, and she might have spilled everything she knew. She would have seen it as just. Ashara’s parents were breaking the very laws that formed their country. They were playing with forces so dangerous that Ashara herself nearly died. But sitting there in that dark, quiet room, seemingly miles from the airy pavilion and its party, years away from those events - Claudia found that the words dried up in her throat. She was not often one for instinct. She was one for careful decision - for the exactitude of her mother’s hands as they weighed and measured and counted - but she knew when it had its place.

“I do not,” Claudia said.

“You truly have nothing to reveal about the nature of Ellana’s recovery? About where Solas gained such knowledge and such power? Or where Ashara did?” Madame de Fer was less eloquent now. She was pressing harder.

“I do not. I have never seen or heard anything in their company that would give me pause. I trust them. Fully.”

It was the truth. Claudia felt it deep inside herself. The place where all truths came from.

Divine Victoria turned to Madame de Fer. Their gazes argued with one another.

“Thank you,” Madame de Fer said at last. “You are dismissed.”

Claudia did her best, neatest bow, and left the room. She went back towards the pavilion, turning and turning the conversation over in her mind. There was division between the Grand Enchanter and the Divine. Both were looking for answers, but they were divided in their approach, and in what answers they hoped to find. The Divine - who was the greater power - seemed to be more willing to listen. To understand. That was good.

For the first time in months, Claudia probed that lacuna in her knowledge - what kind of power, exactly, did Ashara’s parents wield? - and found that its emptiness did not bother her. She did trust them. She trusted even without knowledge. Just the way she trusted that even though she could not see the yeast floating free in the air, she knew she could capture it with a dish of water and sugar, and that it would work its magic when she used it.

Now, on to other matters, like the fact that she could spot Ashara now, but she was nowhere near Lucius. She was leaning on a railing at the outer perimeter of the pavilion, staring out into the dark sea of trees beyond. She looked lovely - her hair piled up in an ornate mass of curls, woven through with gold ribbon, her body clothed not in armor or simple robes but in a deep blue satin overcoat with gold clasps. The gown beneath was pale cream silk.

“Lucius will be speechless when he sees you,” Claudia said as she approached. “Has he seen you yet?”

Ashara’s glance was quick, accusing, barbed. “No. And how do you know what he will think?”

“Because I’m not blind, or an idiot. Why hasn’t he seen you? He was looking for you, last I saw him.”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see him when I came in.”

“Did you look for him, or make a straight dash to this empty railing?”

“Claudia.”

“What? Answer the question.”

Ashara braced herself against the railing, her shoulders slumped and her back arched . For all that she was dressed in finery, it did not sit easily on her. There was something restless in her friend. Something eager to move and be free, and not to be painted into a silent, beautiful courtier. She did not stand up straighter or move more gracefully like most women Claudia knew did when they wore their finest gowns. She was still herself.

“I came straight here,” Ashara said finally. “I’m late because I was thinking of him. Because - because there is something I need to tell him. Something I learned recently. And it frightens me. Everything about how I feel for him frightens me. And I wonder - I wonder if it’s better just to leave things as they are. To be his friend and nothing more.”

Claudia joined Ashara at the railing, leaning against it and looking out at the trees. The forests here in the Arbor Wilds were darker, wilder, more primeval than anything she had seen in the Imperium. Blue arbor blessing curled around the ancient trunks and prophet’s laurel carpeted the forest floor beneath them. For all that it was made of metal and glass, the pavilion seemed to rise out of the edge of the forest. They were two different things, and yet they belonged utterly to each other.

“You know that I have no need for romance or sex,” Claudia said. “My life is perfect as it is. I am perfect as I am, if I say so myself.” Ashara snorted at that, but her blue eyes twinkled with affection when she glanced towards Claudia. “And you and Lucius - you aren’t. Not that you are - broken, or unwhole, but - both of you are more yourselves when you are together. Really together. Does that make sense?”

Ashara looked away, quickly, like she was ashamed. She was biting her lip hard.

“It does,” Ashara said, her voice quavering.

“So why aren’t you going to him?”

“I told you. I am afraid.”

“Bullshit,” Claudia said, pushing off the railing, backing away so that Ashara would have to turn and face her. “You didn’t let fear stop you from saving your mother. From joining the army. From saving countless others. Are you going to let it stand in the way of your own happiness?”

Ashara had turned to face her when she moved, and now she looked vulnerable and small, cast against the darkness of the forest behind her. The fact that she was a head taller than Claudia didn’t mitigate it. She was afraid. Once again, Claudia didn’t know what secret lay in her heart, what truth she was afraid to speak to Lucius. It was another lacuna, no doubt related to the same secret the Grand Enchanter and the Divine had tried to pry from Claudia’s own lips. But once again, Claudia found that instead of logic and patterns, she was filled with a deep sense of trust and intuition. Whatever it was, it would work out.

“You’re right,” Ashara said, and her smallness disappeared. She assumed her full height. She smoothed the wrinkles from her overcoat. “You’re right.”

“Of course I am.”

“Ha, ha. Thank you, lethallan. I love you.” Ashara squeezed Claudia tightly, like she always did. Claudia squeezed her back.

“And I you. Now please, for the love of the Maker, go say that to Lucius before I tie to you two together and beat it out of you.”

Ashara’s cheeks were bright pink. “Fine, fine, fine. I will. I don’t mind missing the opening ceremonies anyway. I don’t know that I have the stomach to look that emperor in the eye, and not light him on fire.”

With a rustle of silk and one backward glance, Ashara was gone. Claudia lingered at the railing, looking out at the forest again, wondering what the delay with the ceremonies was, wondering where Lucius was, and how their conversation would go. Wondering what the face of Thedas would look like when these talks were over. When the horns sounded some time later, announcing the entry of the main dignitaries, Claudia did not join the throng. She stayed back, and she did just what her parents had taught her. She watched, and she listened, and she learned. She would be ready for whatever came next.

*

Cassandra Pentaghast had never considered herself an irritable woman, no matter what disreputable dwarves wrote about her. Everyone else simply had an unhealthy tolerance for nonsense. Leliana had thought that her elevation to Divine might teach her to have more tolerance for so-called nonsense, but if anything it had lessened it yet further. Now Cassandra had the full authority to call people on their idiocy, and all they could do was bow and scrape and say _yes, Most Holy_.

And yet, the nonsense persisted. People dug their heels in when she suggested allowing people of all races to serve the Chantry. When she pointed out that Andraste promised the Dales to the elves, so surely Enasan’s tiny piece of them was warranted. When she held strong against Vivienne’s insistence that the Circles be reinstated in full. When she held strong against mages who said that she should abolish and burn down every last one of them, instead of keeping them open as voluntary centers of magical instruction.

When they bayed and bayed and demanded that she send templars to subdue the dangerous elven mages, and she had at last relented, only to keep them firmly under her control. The emperor would never have them. She would use his ends to her own. She had learned that much of the Game in her long life.

Now, standing in the heart of Enasan, at the end of a war she should never have allowed to happen, Cassandra had even less tolerance for nonsense than she started with.

“I told you that the girl either knew nothing, or that she would vouch for Ellana and her family,” she said to Vivienne when Claudia Naevar had departed.

Vivienne rearranged her robes primly. She was as beautiful and well-appointed as ever.

“Yes. They have quite the bulwark around themselves.”

“You speak as if they threaten and coerce it. They _earn_ the trust that everyone we have spoken to places in them. It is time to face the facts, Vivienne. Our investigation has yielded us nothing.”

“That is patently untrue. We have more proof than ever that Solas and Ellana are tampering with the Veil here in Enasan. We have firsthand accounts from Orlesian soldiers and mages. We have my own measurements from our journey here. And please note, my dear, that Dorian’s apprentice did not say she could prove that they did _not_ have an ancient artifact, or designs to alter Thedas as we know it. She just said that she trusted them. Those are two different things.”

“Then we arrive at the same question we have debated for months. What would you have me do?” Cassandra ground the heel of her palm into her forehead. She already had a headache, and they had not even gone in to the formal reception yet. Neither had Ellana or Solas, as their runners told them. Perhaps they were doing the same thing. Waiting for the other side to blink first. A note had been delivered from Ellana earlier in the day, saying that she would like to meet privately before any of the public talks. Perhaps she was waiting for a response.

“I would have you accuse them directly, demand the return of whatever artifact it is that they have found, reverse the damage to the Veil, and exile Ellana and Solas, forbidding them any role in Enasan for the rest of their lives,” Vivienne said. It was a swift, rehearsed speech. She had said it many times.

“And tell me,” Cassandra said. “How would I enforce such an edict? We all know what Solas is capable of. And it is not just by his strength alone that they held back the armies of Orlais.”

Vivienne stiffened. “If I was Divine, I would not have to worry about enforcing such an edict. I would have the power solidified in my grasp.”

“Well, you are not Divine. And I can’t go back and make myself a more powerful Divine. Nor would I, if I had that power.”

Vivienne slumped for the first time that day. It was a brooding, calculating posture, and not a defeated one.

“I care for them too, Cassandra,” Vivienne said. “But it is too great a risk to allow them this much power. No one should have it.”

“No one except you.”

“That is unfair.”

It was. Cassandra thought of the life Vivienne had lived - the stone walls the Chantry had trapped her in. How they had taught her - had taught all mages - to fear their own power, to see it as a danger and nothing more. Vivienne had spent her life managing risk. Of course she saw this as another risk to be managed.

So why didn’t Cassandra herself see it that way? Why, as the war had gone on, had she found herself more and more and more disgusted by it? By how unnecessary it was? Why did she trust Ellana and Solas more and more, the more proof they had?

Cassandra wasn’t an irritable woman, but she had always acknowledged her own impatience. She had a growing feeling, and she would act on it now.

“Louise,” she called. Their attendant appeared at once. “Go and fetch High Commander Lavellan. Take this note. It says where she will be.”

When Ellana appeared she looked older than the last time Cassandra had seen her. Command had weighed heavily on her. There was more grey in her hair, more lines around her eyes. But she still walked with her head held high, and with an archer’s grace.

“Divine Victoria,” she said. “Grand Enchanter Vivienne.”

“High Commander Lavellan,” she and Vivienne chorused in return.

“I am happy we could meet ahead of the planned talks,” Ellana said. Josephine would be proud, how easily a courtier’s words rested in her mouth now. But Cassandra knew it was only an illusion, an armor hiding the woman she really was underneath.

And that was what Cassandra trusted and treasured the most.

“Tell me why we should let you keep whatever artifact you have found, and continue altering the Veil,” Cassandra said.

Another politician might have quailed at such a bold question, or tried to spin it. Ellana did not. She visibly relaxed. She became herself again.

“Because we will never, ever use it to harm anyone on the surface of this earth,” she said, with the same perfect determination that had rung in her voice when she held the Inquisitor’s blade above her head for the first time at Skyhold.

“That’s all we have? Your word?” Vivienne asked at once.

“You have our actions, too. Could we not, at any point in this war, have used such an immense power to destroy all of Orlais? To kill every last soldier? To tear open the Veil and rain demons down on Val Royeaux? When our own daughter’s life was in danger, could we not have torn the world apart to protect her?”

It clicked into place at last. Cassandra let out a steady breath. When they’d last had this conversation in some side room of the Winter Palace, the horror of Clermont fresh on everyone’s minds, Cassandra had not been able to let her suspicions and her fear go. Ellana and Solas’s power was an untested thing. Who knew what they might do, with their backs against a wall? But Ellana was right. Their backs had been against a wall for months on end. And they had only used Solas’s power as a surgeon does his sharpest scalpel - with exquisite precision.

“It is not just, or safe,” Vivienne said. “You are admitting that you have such power. You must also admit that no one nation should have it, let alone one person. It is madness.”

“Perhaps,” Ellana said, leveling her gaze at Vivienne. She was dressed for the party, her armor more ceremonial than effective, and she had not taken to a battlefield in more than two decades, but Cassandra saw her warrior’s resolve in that moment. Her spine like silverite. Her conviction like ironbark. “But could you really take it from us?”

The muscles in Vivienne’s jaw shifted beneath her dark skin.

“What would it take?” Ellana pressed. “It would take all the armies of Thedas, brought to bear on a country full of innocents. A country full of people who have been wronged and violated again and again and again. That is not just, either. And would it actually work? Or would it only bring down the very ruin that you fear?”

Vivienne was a soldier in her own right. She had the same silverite in her spine. Cassandra looked between them. Vivienne had to know when it was time to yield the battlefield, and this was that moment.

“You did not send your mages, Vivienne,” Ellana said, voice softening just a little. “You could have at any time. But you didn’t. You do not want to see my people suffer. You do not want to see your people suffer. Yes, we have power that we have not spoken of. But we have had that power since my daughter was still in my belly, and you were never the wiser. We could have taken the Dales back by force a hundred times in the last twenty years. And yet we never did. There was never any trouble until some Orlesian prick decided to play at being emperor. Look to the country you adopted before you look to mine.”

Vivienne’s posture eased at last. She yielded.

“I will stand at your side,” she said, her voice soft now too. “Not because I think that what you are doing is right. But because I think that it is the only way to truly end this war. To protect your people and mine. But I will always be watching, Ellana Lavellan. As long as I draw breath.”

“I am happy to hear it, my friend,” Ellana said, smiling a sad smile. “I would have it no other way.”

Cassandra’s headache began to lessen. She began to breathe again.

“The emperor will not be so easily swayed, I think,” Cassandra said. “But we will stand beside you, in the rest of these talks. The Chantry and the Circle of Magi. I have already spoken to Dorian, and the Tevinter delegation will side with you as well. I’m told that Leliana has had some words with King Alistair, so with any luck he has chosen a sympathetic envoy.”

Ellana sat in the remaining chair in the room. Her smile was less sad now.

“We have time for all of that later,” she said. “I have missed my friends. I want to talk to them now.”

Cassandra and Vivienne shared another glance. Vivienne smiled a tired, defeated, happy smile.

“So have I,” Cassandra said, and she took Ellana’s hand.

*

Briala did have to commend Ellana for her choice of venue for the opening ceremonies of the peace talks. The pavilion was grand enough to spark awe even in the most cynical of Orlesian nobles in attendance, and yet it was undeniably elven in design, from the scrollwork on the green wrought iron to the way it married indoor and outdoor spaces, nature and civilization. She had never been to Enasan before this visit. She had thought it would reek of the same disdain she experienced at the hands of the Dalish clan so many years ago, Felassan and Celene at her side. It did not. It felt more like home than she wanted it to.

Felassan would have liked it here, she decided. The way it married old and new. She saw Solas enter the grand space, Ellana at his side, and wondered if he ever thought of his old friend. If he thought his death was still worth it. He had his wife and his child and his country, after all. It all worked out for him. No doubt Ellana felt the same way about hiding the locket, about preventing Briala from reuniting with Celene. They had come out on top, and she had to admire them for that, if for nothing else.

She was not without her own happiness. She watched her daughter Vianne circulate through the crowd, bright and bubbling and everything she could ever have asked for in a child. But she could not help but wonder, looking at Solas standing beside Ellana, the way he must have once stood beside Mythal. A knight beside his warrior queen. She could not help but wonder if there were other worlds where none of this came to pass, and she had different happinesses.

She had to commend Ellana on the painting, too. It was a gorgeous thing that she offered to the emperor after their formal speeches. The painted version of Ellana, with her blood and bruises and long pointed ears and black vallaslin and brown skin, looked ready to leap from the canvas. The Anchor burning in her upraised left palm looked like it might crackle to life at any moment. She was every inch a dark-skinned Dalish elf - and every inch a hero.

“I noticed that the late Empress Celene still had an incorrect version of my retreat from Haven hanging in the Winter Palace,” she said. “Please see that the error is corrected.”

Briala could not help but smile then. Ellana was not the ally she would have asked for. But she was an ally nonetheless.

Briala would ensure that the painting was hung, that the old one - the one where Ellana was paler and more human - disappeared. Perhaps she would even make sure that this new one was hung in a more prominent place - perhaps even in Val Royeaux, instead of Halamshiral. A reminder to all who saw it. _Do not try to erase us. Do not try to redefine us. We are here, and we will never go quietly again._

Briala caught Ellana’s eye just as she left the stage. She raised her glass of champagne. Ellana smiled, nodded. It was likely the only interaction they would have during the talks. That was fine. Briala turned, and melted into the crowd, listening for the sound of her daughter’s laughter and all it promised.

*

Ashara found Lucius near the table laden with food and drink. He seemed to be studying each pastry one at a time. He was fidgeting with the end of his sleeves as he did so. He was nervous, no doubt. He hated huge gatherings like this. She wanted to lace her hands with his, pull them away from their fidgeting. She wanted to turn around and speed away from him before he saw her. But Claudia was right. She would not let fear run her life. She would not let despair run it, either. She had given enough hours to both of them, in the last year. No more.

She reached out and touched his arm.

“Hello,” she said.

Except when he turned, when his eyes were on her, she still felt the fear like a tide that could swallow her. She still wanted to bolt. Because he was speechless. Just as Claudia said he would be. And there was still that nagging, draining voice inside that said she did not deserve to render people speechless, that she was not worthy of the warmth in his eyes.

“Hello,” Lucius said. “I was starting to wonder where you were.”

“Sorry,” Ashara said. “I got - held up. Have you tried any of the pastries? Mamae has a new baker from Orlais that she swears by. He’s quite gifted.”

“Not yet. Did you want one?”

“Is that a serious question?”

Lucius chuckled, and began filling a plate for them. Ashara watched him, drank him in. What if she told him and he left, and this was the last time she ever saw him? She needed every memory. She needed to memorize him. It was impossible, of course. All those years together, and Papae still did not know the exact shade of Mamae’s cheek.

“Here,” Lucius said, offering her the tiny, delicate cherry tartlet first. Ashara closed her eyes as she bit into it, the better to savor the buttery pastries, the sharp tartness of the cherries, the silkiness of the sauce. She groaned aloud.

“Spirits, I have not had something that good in months. It was all rations at the front. And then I got home and I - well, I guess I could have gone out, but I didn’t really feel like it.”

The joy that had been cresting between them popped, a bubble struck by a pin. Lucius’s face softened into something like sadness.

“That’s understandable after - everything.” He was fidgeting again with his free hand.

“I’m sorry. We’re at a party. I should be talking about happy things.”

“Don’t apologize. I want to know everything that happened. Especially if it helps you to talk about it.”

They had unconsciously walked away from the crowd, towards another part of the pavilion that looked out towards the city, gleaming with magelight in the darkness. This was her opening. She could tell him. She had to tell him.

“There is something I want to tell you. To show you.”

Lucius set down the plate of pastries on a small bench. “Okay.”

Just as it had that day in the restaurant, the sound of the people and music around them swelled suddenly, became a terrifying din, became the sound of trumpets and armor and swords, and Ashara could not breathe. She closed her eyes. She would never be able to summon the energy like this. Her mana sparked, erratic, in her chest. Too much electricity. She needed to calm herself.

“Ash?” Lucius’s hand was hovering behind her back, not quite touching.

“Not here. Let’s go somewhere else. Come with me.”

Ashara sped away from the pavilion, towards the imposing structure behind it. Here, in the center of Enasan’s political power? Would she reveal it to him here? No, there was nowhere private enough, nowhere she could be alone with her grief when ( _if_ ) it all went awry. She went to the public eluvian in the grand foyer instead. Home. She would take him to her home.

Lucius followed her quietly through the Crossroads beyond the eluvian. He squinted hard at the colorful trees.

“Do they hurt your eyes?” she asked.

“Yes. I forgot that this place isn’t very - comfortable, for humans.”

Another reminder of the gulf between them. And she was only going to widen it with what would come next. Ashara’s heart sank lower.

“I’ll slow down.”

They walked side by side. He was fidgeting again. She knew she should try and share some small talk with him, something to ease the tension that lay thick between them, but all the words stuck in her throat. So she stayed silent, until they arrived at the eluvian closest to her home.

“It’s still a little bit of a walk. Sorry - I should have asked if you wanted to go so far from the party. It was presumptuous of me to bring you here.”

Lucius stopped walking, planted himself, solid as the trees all around them. He shook his head.

“You keep apologizing. You don’t have to. I am exactly where I want to be.” His voice was low and earnest. The hairs on the back of Ashara’s neck stood up.

They walked through the darkness and Lucius looked all around, asked about how the streetlights worked, if they were electrified runes or Veilfire or magelights. She explained what she knew of how they worked, then asked after his work on the press.

“It’s done, in the sense that I left two fully-functioning presses back in Minrathous. My father would have marveled at them. I am very pleased. There’s more work to do of course - and, I had considered leaving Tevinter behind to sell them in other places. I think they will make printing easier, make books more accessible, and that isn’t something that should be limited to Tevinter alone.”

“I am sure there would be a market here in Enasan,” Ashara said at once, the words tumbling from her lips without a second thought.

“Yes, I am sure there would be,” Lucius said. He was fidgeting again. “Is this your house?”

“It is. Well, my parent’s. Well, I still live here. Mamae says she doesn’t understand why some children want to move out before they’re married. She says she’s happy to keep me as long as I’m happy to stay. Something about families staying together in their aravels. So - yes, this is my house. I’ve never lived anywhere else. Not really. Except -”

Except Skyhold, where he’d shared her bed more nights than he hadn’t. Except Minrathous, except that tiny flat that had just started to feel like it was _theirs_ when he ended things. When that feeling felt more like a trap than a blessing. But she had lived three rootless years, seen more than she cared to, and now she wondered how she never saw that feeling for the precious gift that it was.

They were still standing on the threshold. Lucius was taking it all in, calm and sure as always. Ashara felt herself steadying in his presence. That was the magic he worked in her, real as the magic he worked as he felt out the wards her father placed on the house each day. It was the magic she would lose, someday, if what she was about to try did not work.

“The wards are quite unique. I can’t figure out how all of them work,” Lucius said, testing and probing them with his mana.

“Oh, here, let me show you. That way you’ll always know how to get inside. I mean - I don’t know how long you’re staying. I don’t -” Ashara sighed and tipped her head back and closed her eyes. Her face was hot. She felt absurdly like crying. Why, after months and months of grey nothingness, was it distressing to have her heart so full of feeling again? So full of hope? “Honestly, I don’t know what I’m doing right now, Lucius.”

The silence probably wasn’t as long as it felt - but it was still there. Then Lucius chuckled.

“Honestly? Neither do I.”

That admission was the most steadying thing of all. Whatever happened next, they were in this together.

Ashara showed him how to undo the wards, and they stepped inside her childhood home.

“It’s lovely,” Lucius said at once, looking around. “Your parents have taken great pride in it. Are all of these murals your father’s?”

“Yes. I used to try and help when I was very small. I’ll have to show you the one I nearly ruined in the study. I showed you that memory once, remember? Back when we had just met.” _Before we came more than friends, back in that time of push-and-pull when we were trying to figure each other out._

“Ahh, yes. I do remember.” Warmth colored his words. He smiled at her.

_Now, or never._

“I brought you here because I want to show you something. Something I don’t want anyone else to know about right now. Something about elven magic. Well, maybe it’s just magic. Not elven magic at all. But - can you feed directly on the energy of the Fade?”

Lucius frowned at her, puzzled. They were standing in the main room of the house, the wide open space that housed kitchen, dining table, and sitting area alike. Ashara gestured to the couch. He sat. It was surreal to see him here, a place filled with so many memories. It was also right in ways that she could not name. Ways that stabbed into her chest, they were so filled with that awful hope of what that might mean.

“You mean - instead of food or water or sleep? I have heard of it in theory, but only in very old texts. Supposedly the old somniari could do it. I have never heard of the average mage doing to it any great degree.”

“Well - I’ve learned how. My father always taught me bits and pieces here and there, of course. But I never made a real practice of it until I had been working with Vir’anor for some time. It was practical, really. It meant I had to carry fewer provisions in my pack.” Ashara reached up and squeezed the shoulder the chevalier had cleaved in two. “And it became a necessity during the war. Especially the last part. The fighting in Oruvun. Food was scarce. And - my friend Haleir and I, we got separated from our unit, and we were attacked, and both of us were very badly wounded. We nearly died.”

Lucius was tense now, watching her like nothing else in the room even existed. His formerly fidgety hands were balled into fists on his knees.

“But we went into uthenera instead. I didn’t even really know what I was doing, to be honest. I just - felt myself bleeding out, felt myself dying, and knew that the Fade could save me. I clung to it for three days. No food, no water. Cole - you remember my stories about him? The only thing he gave us was water and honey brushed on our lips. And we both lived. Our wounds weren’t perfectly healed, but they were healed enough that we could wake up. And - I am afraid of what all of that means.”

Lucius was still watching her intently. His face was oddly difficult to read. He was using his Laetan face - the impassive mask he’d needed to survive all those years as a poor orphan in the Vyrantium and Minrathous Circles surrounded by Altuses.

“What do you think it means?”

_Now, or never_.

Ashara reached for his hand and took it in her own. It was warm and calloused and exactly how she remembered.

“I want to try and show you,” she said. “It seems like all elves can hear it, with enough training, even if they aren’t mages. My father and I have been trying it. I want to see if humans can, too. I’m going to channel the energy into you. It’s like a form of Creation magic - like a very, very slow healing spell, very low frequency waves of energy. It’s so deep you almost can’t hear it or feel it at first. But it’s there. Listen.”

She kept her eyes on his. She raised their joined hands and pressed them to his chest. She opened her connection to the Fade, felt him open his, felt their auras brush and mingle and it was so similar to all the times they’d done it while lying together that Ashara had to close her eyes for a moment and think past all the memories it brought of warm skin and gentle touch and panting breath. She pushed pasts those and found the energy she was looking for, tugged it into herself, felt it light up every pathway in her body, and pushed it towards Lucius.

_Please_ , she begged any spirit, any god who would listen. _Please, please, please._

“Can you feel it?” she asked.

“No,” Lucius said, his voice soft, shaky. She did not dare open her eyes and look at him.

“Try again,” she said. She drew harder on the energy, so hard she could taste the lyrium-tang of the Fade in her mouth, so hard that she could feel it crackling all over her skin. She felt Lucius’s heart speed and speed and speed beneath her hand. She heard him gasp softly. She opened her eyes, and saw that his were closed, that his lips were parted.

He opened his eyes, and looked at her, and she did not think she had ever seen such open emotion on another person’s face. Joy and anguish mingled. He squeezed her hand. She knew before he said anything that he had not felt what she felt.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said quietly. “It just feels like _you_.”

Ashara dropped his hand. She closed off her connection to the Fade. She looked down at the wood floor, tracing the whorls and grains of oak she knew by heart.

“It means that I will live forever,” she said. “And you won’t.”

Her throat started to close up. Her eyes burned. All the hope beating in her chest had gone to rot. The future was set in stone now. One day - someday, somehow, who knew when - he would close his eyes forever, and she would not.

Lucius reached across the space between them and took her face in his hands and tipped it upwards. He was closer than before.

“It’s a good thing, Ash,” he said. “I like the thought of a world where you’ll always be around.”

Ashara kissed him.

She kissed him because she knew it would be sweet, and she had forgotten what sweetness was like.

And it was sweet - the way he gasped, the way he parted his lips to welcome her, the way he dropped his hands from her face to her waist and drew her closer, so that she had to sit up on her knees and press her body to his. He wrapped his arms tight around her, kissed her again and again and again, mouth opening and closing against hers. His lips were warm and soft and he’d worn his hair down and Ashara could tangle her hands in it as she kissed him back. She let every whimper slip past her lips into his. She let the tears fall from her eyes and hit his cheeks.

“I love you,” she said when they parted. “I love you, and I never want to let you go.”

Lucius cupped her face again.

“Then don’t,” he said, and his voice was raspy with his own tears.

Ashara kissed him again, hungrier this time, greedier for his touch. Lucius responded in kind. Nipped at her lip and slid his tongue against hers, touched her everywhere he could reach. Her face, her hair, her shoulders, her waist, all up and down her back. She hiked up her skirts so she could sit on him fully and she did not miss the way he gasped and groaned high in his throat at the weight of her against him. He was hard between her thighs.

“Maybe with time,” she gasped when they needed breath. “Maybe with time you’ll feel it.”

“And maybe I never will,” he said. “What then?”

His lips were swollen up from the roughness of their kisses. She could see his pulse in the brown column of his throat. His hair was wild where she had mussed it. But his question was a serious one, and so was his expression.

“I don’t know how many days I will have,” Ashara said finally. “But I know I want to spend as many of them as I can with you.”

Lucius made an inarticulate sound. There were tears in his eyes now. She kissed each of his cheeks, took his face between her hands. She leaned their foreheads together and breathed him in.

“Vhenan,” she said. “Vhenan, vhenan - ar lath ma.”

She had never called him _vhenan_ before.

It was a word she’d grown up hearing all her life, passed back and forth between her parents like a favorite blanket, like a binding seal. It never wore from every day use. It had a meaning ancient as the history of her people. It was at the root of _elvhen, Elvhenan, venadahl_. She knew its every meaning and she’d always wanted to be sure before she used it.

But it was true now. It had always been true. He was her home, her heart outside her chest, and she would never let him go again. Everything was falling into place within her, like books being returned to their shelves.

“Te amo,” Lucius said. “Te amo, amata, meus amor.”

They kissed, and this time it was long and slow, neither of them willing to part. Ashara pressed herself against him. Heard him suck in his breath in response.

“Come to bed with me,” she said.

“Yes,” he murmured, kissing her cheeks, her neck. He stood, and she clung to him as best she could, both of them swaying, both of them unwilling to let go. “Yes, please.”

She led him down the hall to the bedroom where she’d grown up, and she closed the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ....don't worry guys, no way in hell am I going to fade to black on this scene ;)
> 
> Thank you as always for reading! Prompts, suggestions, comments and general discussion more than welcome here or on my [Tumblr](https://buttsonthebeach.tumblr.com/)!


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all, the first section is just.... all smut. Smutty smutty literature.
> 
> There is a tiny bit at the end of the second section, too.
> 
> The third section has none :)

It was all a blur at first. Lucius, her bedroom, the eager hands and noises and the shedding of clothes. It couldn’t be real. Such sweetness, such joy, such safety, couldn’t be real. Not after everything that happened. Ashara was sure of it.

Then came the moment when Lucius laid her back against the bed and hovered over her, looking down at her, and their eyes locked, and Ashara was sure that nothing had ever been this real.

“I have missed you,” he said. His thumb traced the curve of her cheekbone.

“I have missed you,” she said, and all at once the space between them was a gulf, an ocean, something awful and uncrossable. They weren’t undressed all the way yet. He still had his cotton undershirt and breeches on. She still had the high-necked cream silk dress that had been beneath her overcoat on. That didn’t matter. She pulled him down to her and wrapped her legs around his waist and kissed him hard.

Lucius was a quiet lover, normally. But that action made him pour needy sounds into her open mouth. He rocked against her and her pulse surged to feel his hard length press into her over and over again. She broke the kiss, scrabbled for the high collar of her dress and the tiny buttons there. Lucius’s hands took her place. He undid them, parted both sides of the dress, kissed up and down one side of her neck, and then the other - and then he paused suddenly.

“Oh,” he said, and it was not a noise of pleasure, but of sorrow.

“Oh - the scar,” she said.

Lucius bent his head again and kissed that too, so lightly she could barely feel it, as if it might still hurt. He looked down at her afterwards, his black hair framing his face in soft waves.

“I was so afraid of losing you,” he said. “I was so afraid I would never get the chance to come here and see you again.”

Ashara didn’t think she could name all the ways she’d felt about him in the time they’d been apart. Not even to herself. Not yet. She had buried them too deeply, ignored them too effectively. That was for later. Because there would be a _later_. That thought made her smile through the tears that pricked her eyes all over again.

“I need you,” she said, and maybe that was the best way of saying it, after all.

Lucius stood, pulled his shirt over his head. She was briefly memorized by all the brown skin, the dark hair on his chest and his stomach. She could his swollen cock outlined in his breeches, and she sat up too, the better to unlace the front and take him in her hand.

“Ash,” he groaned when she found him, already so, so hard with desire. She squeezed him tight. She was slick and hot between her own thighs. “Amata. Oh, Maker, I need you.”

She was all impulse now. She could have him. She could have him however she wanted. She leaned forward and licked the very tip of him, tasted salt. The sounds he made were high, in the back of his throat. He reached down and started finding the pins that held her hair together. It had taken hours to put up. She didn’t care that he was undoing it. She wanted to be utterly undone. She pushed his breeches down his hips, saw all of him - the tight brown skin and the patch of black, wiry hair and then his heavy sac, swaying with each of his movements. The head of his cock just barely peered out of its hood and she stroked him to watch the skin move over it. The noise he made filled her with a surge of powerful joy. She licked the tip again, swirled around it the way she knew he liked, teased the ridge around it, and his hands were in her hair now, and he was trying to stop himself from rocking further into her touch.

“Lay back again,” he said, kicking off his breeches and his smalls. He was bare before her now.

She shrugged out of the top half of the dress first. She had not bothered with a breastband. The overcoat was thick enough that nothing would show through, and her breasts were small enough not to need one all the time. Especially not after months of armor, months of her chest feeling so tight she could not breathe. Before she could push her dress off all the way, Lucius was on her again, leaning her back kissing all over her shoulders and collarbones, down to her breasts. He lavished his attention on each one, and he lay down on top of her as he did, and just the weight and pressure of his body made her whimper in relief.

“Vhenan,” she said, pleading, running her hands along his back and shoulders and her fingers through his hair, testing the weight of the word in her mouth, how right it felt to say it. He licked and teased and sucked and bit all along each of her breasts. “Vhenan, vhenan.”

She felt him rub his length against her leg, felt a small damp spot form on the silk of her dress.

“I want you.” His voice was rough, and full of need. He ground hard against her leg. “I want you, love -”

“I want you. Come here, come here now.”

She kicked off the rest of her dress when he lifted himself off of her. He paused, his eyes taking in every inch of her. He sucked in his breath. Of course. The ugly scar across her stomach, the wound that had nearly ended her life.

“It’s fine,” she said. “I’m fine.”

The sadness and the need warred in his eyes. The need won out when she smiled at him and ran her thumb along his lips.

He reached between them and pushed her smalls to one side and rubbed his fingers along the seam of her cunt and she had never felt anything so good in her life. Whatever he said in Tevene was guttural and appreciative. She widened her legs and he positioned himself there, his cock pushing against her. The room was full of the smell of sex. She had never had sex in this bedroom, she realized. It was where her first fumbling attempts at pleasuring herself had happened, but nothing more. Lucius pressed forward and he was big and thick and she whimpered in spite of herself at the feeling of him pressing, pressing, pressing in.

“You’re so tight,” he panted against her ear. “Is this fine?”

Ashara willed her body to relax, to accept the sweet fullness, but when he moved again she winced at the burn. Her smalls were tight across her hips and around her legs, pushed to the side as they were.

“Just give me a moment,” she insisted.

Lucius sat back and brushed the hair off her forehead. His cock slipped free of her and her body relaxed. He reached between them and before she could say anything put his thumb on her pearl and made a slow, gentle circle around it.

She whimpered again, this time at the spasm within her.

He kept thumbing her clit - gentle, delicate swipes that made her blood and her mana surge. She could barely feel it through her smalls. That touch tantalized her. It made her clit throb and stand up higher in its folds - she could feel it grow with each barely there pass of his thumb. He remembered, of course. He remembered that this was the best way to wind her higher and higher. She felt her slick dripping down her cleft, felt her hips rock towards him, her neck and her breasts grow hot with need.

“Oh - _oh_ -”

“There you are,” he murmured. “Here.”

He pulled her smalls down her legs and tossed them aside. They were both completely bare now. They paused for a moment, each of them studying the other. She didn’t linger on any one detail of him. She focused on the whole. Lucius. Her heart. He was here, and he was with her, and they would not part again.

He slid one finger into her cunt. She looked down to watch it pump in and out of her body, to see the creases lining his palm. He added another and the stretch felt good this time. Then he shimmied down the bed and all the blood rushed to her face at the thought of what would happen next. He paused at her scar first, kissing the whole length of it, resting his forehead against it, taking a deep breath as if to push his own fear away. Then he dipped lower, and she spread her legs in welcome, and he sealed his mouth around her clit and sucked.

She keened at the pleasure of it, threw her legs over his shoulders and dug her heels into his back, wanton with how good it felt. He danced his tongue all around her and she wasn’t even sure what to call the sounds coming from her mouth then. She looked down the length of her body, saw his head between her thighs. Her cunt spasmed around his fingers.

“Wait,” she managed. He looked up. His eyes did not shine in the dark, not the way her own did. He was beautiful all the same. “I want you beside me. I want to feel you. Come up here.”

He stretched his long lean body out next to hers and put one arm under her neck and held her tight and put the two fingers back inside of her, working them harder now, short sharp thrusts that made her groan.

“I’ll never forget the first time I did this to you,” he said in her ear. “Maker, you feel so good. I want to feel you come.”

She pressed down so his palm rubbed on the mound of her sex, and spread her legs until she felt it pressing right on her aching bud. She ground against him and he began kissing along the length of her ear, all the way to the point and then back. She felt her cunt clench once around his fingers, felt her clit twitch against his palm.

“Oh - oh, _oh_ -”

“Yes. I feel that. I want you to come, Ash, I missed this, I missed you, I love you -”

Her cunt squeezed tight again around his fingers and her clit twitched frantically and he felt it and he pulled his fingers out of her so he could rub them, warm and wet, in quick circles around her clit, and she was gone. She came so hard her body contracted with it, and he circled and circled and circled her through each second, and then at the very end plunged his fingers back inside her and pushed his palm hard against her mound and she writhed there, wringing every last ounce of wet, sweet pleasure that she could from him. She felt weightless when it was done.

“Oh, love. Oh, you are so beautiful.” He kissed her forehead, and then her cheek. He pressed his body tight against hers. She turned her face and kissed him and made gentle, grateful sounds against his mouth. Words in any language felt beyond her. She didn’t know the last time she’d felt this at peace.

He let her come back to herself, even though his cock lay across her thigh, pulsing now and then with need. When she was ready, she pulled away, and sat up on wobbly knees.

“Sit up against the headboard. Here - move the pillows.”

He complied, and she knelt over him as she had on the couch, when she said those fateful words. She took his shaft in her hand and sank slowly down on him, and watched as his eyes screwed shut and his mouth dropped open. He was full inside her and his hands were tight on her hips. She wrapped her arms around him, and then her legs, though that took a moment of adjusting from them both in which he slipped part of the way out of her. That made it all the better to sink back down, and then to begin that slow, rocking rhythm that would tease him over the edge.

“Good?” She asked, even though his head was tipped back and his mouth was still open and his breath was short.

“Oh - I am afraid I won’t last, it’s so good -” He laughed, but it ended in a groan as she slid him all the way home and then circled her hips around him. “Wait - contraceptive. Do you still take the brew?”

She had a flash of thought - would there be any children between them, ever, and what would that mean - but she circled her hips again, and set it aside.

“Yes. I do. Don’t hold back. I want all of you.”

He put his hands on her hips and helped her bounce up and down on him. Every stroke felt so good, so right.

“Oh, you feel perfect. I love feeling you move in me -” she said.

Lucius wrapped his arms tight around her body, and she kept working him in and out of her. He held her close, muffling his sounds against her shoulder.

“Like that, like that, you’re going to make me come -” he murmured.

She went harder, faster. He rubbed every sweet, swollen place inside her.

“That’s it,” she murmured. “That’s it -”

He went stiff all over - his mouth fell open in a shocked ‘o’ on her shoulder - he clawed at her back - and he came. She could just feel the throb of his cock and she squeezed around it, and felt him shudder with relief at how good it was.  She ground herself against him and made him groan again. When he sat back at last, she kissed each of his cheeks and each of his eyelids and put her palm over his racing heart.

“I love you,” she said again.

He opened his eyes, so dark and brown in the low light, and smiled at her. “I love you, too.”

What a wonder those words were. What a wonder this closeness was.

But eventually she did have to pull herself away, feel him slip out of her body. She knew she ought to clean up, and yet she couldn’t bring herself to stray farther than his side once he sank down onto the bed. She tucked herself into his side and he put an arm around her, and when she put her head on his chest she could hear his heart slow down.

“I missed that,” he said. “I missed you.”

They were nearly the same words she’d said the last time they made love, those years ago in Minrathous. When it was an ending, and not a beginning.

“I missed you, too,” she said. They’d said it already. She had a feeling they would say it many  more times in the days to come, as they discovered all the exact ways they had missed each other. She burrowed even closer to him, needing every inch of skin she could get. He kissed the crown of her head. She took a breath. “I don’t want to miss you again. We will find a way to make this work. Together.”

“Together,” he said, with another kiss to the crown of her head.

She drifted off to sleep like that, and woke later, the room still dark, and felt sticky between her legs where their slick had mixed and cooled. She was curled up neatly in her sheets. She didn’t even have to open her eyes to know that Lucius was sprawled out on his back, scarcely covered by the sheets, a limb flung in every direction. It was impressive, really, given that her bed was rather small. Her hand only had to search a moment before it found his shoulder and she had that precious skin again, that connection deeper than bone.

She slept again, and did not bother to guide her dreams.

Because of that, she did not know what it was that made her bolt awake, gasping, her face wet with tears. She only knew that Lucius was there at once, his voice gentle and soothing, already pulling her down to bury herself against his chest. He was murmuring soothing words in Tevene. Just as she had to Sylvio months ago in that grove near Clermont, his mother’s blood cooling in the earth nearby.

“Better?” he said in Trade when her shaking had stopped. He stroked her back over and over and over again.

“Better,” she said, tipping her head up so he could kiss her on the lips.

Eventually she pulled him on top of her, and this time he slid easily into her body, and they both made grateful sounds for the closeness.

“Is it good like this?” he asked as he moved in her, slow and sure and thick with want. He brushed the curls back from her forehead and kissed her cheek.

“Yes,” she said, arching against him, squeezing her legs tight around his hips and feeling him pump in and out, the tense and release of his muscles. His hair was a mess around his face but it was his brown eyes that transfixed her again. She could pretend there was nothing else in the world but those brown eyes.

He went like that, slow and careful in and out of her, until neither of them could stand it, until Ashara slid a hand between them to play with her clit, and then Lucius had to go fast and hard until he came with a choked cry, just as Ashara hovered on her own precipice. He left her aching, unresolved, for only a minute or two before he caught her restless movements and his own fingers found their way to that slippery cleft and circled and teased until she was writhing against the sheets as wave after wave filled her core with wet, warm joy.

“That’s one way to fall back asleep,” Ashara said when they settled again. Lucius was curled behind her. She knew he would stay like that until he was sure she was asleep again, and then he would return to his own sprawl. She leaned back into him. She felt grateful, happy. Alive.

“Do you think you could take several hundred more nights like this one?” he asked. There was a new softness to his voice. A vulnerability.

Several hundred more nights.

She might have thousands of nights.

Millions of them.

She turned around in his arms so she could look at him, tousled and perfect in the bed beside her - the kind and gentle man who made her feel more like herself than any other person she knew.

However many nights she might have, she wanted as many of them as possible to include him.

“Yes,” she said, and kissed him again, leaning into it, drawing him back, knowing this was a beginning like any other - fragile and tender as new bone.

**

Lucius could not claim that the first night he spent at Ashara’s parent’s house was the most comfortable one in his life - he was an inelegant sleeper, and his arms and legs were long - but it was still one of the best. Even if he was uncomfortable, it meant that he could wake as often as he liked to look at her sleeping face. This was real. Really real. He had taken a risk coming to Enasan. Saying good-bye to everything he had built. But every time he found another freckle on her shoulders or her chest or her cheeks, it was worth it.

He turned what she had told him over in his mind. The thought that she would live forever. It had not shocked him the way she clearly expected it to. Maybe because it was something he had always wondered about anyway. Maybe because he had always sincerely believed that Thedas could only benefit from her having a long life. That people as bright and good as she was deserved that forever.

The last time he woke, when morning light was filtering through her window, he realized why the thought had been so much more frightening for her than it was for him. He had never expected to live forever. It was like expecting to fly. He would live as long as he had ever expected to, and he would have her at his side for all of those years if he had any say in the matter - and then he would die, and she would live centuries without him. He imagined himself in her shoes. The grief, and how long he would have to live with it. It choked him.

Perhaps there was a world where he was foolish enough to think that he should leave now, spare her that pain. Thankfully, it was not this one. It was her choice. He had no right to make it for her. He just had to live up to its magnitude - to be grateful every day that she had chosen him, and to show that gratitude. He’d sat up when he woke, and now he leaned down and kissed her cheek. She murmured, shifted in the sheets, and buried herself deeper in her pillow.

 _I am grateful_ , he thought, as if she could hear. _I am so grateful that you would choose me._

He didn’t think he’d be able to sleep again with the crick in his neck from his cramped quarters. He stood, and stretched to try and alleviate it. That was when he heard the clatter of plates in another room and remembered, abruptly, that Ashara still lived with her parents.

For one absurd moment, he imagined climbing out her window into the garden beyond and making his escape. But this was a new beginning. A real one. He was older now than when they had first been together, clear-eyed, and he knew what he wanted. He washed himself with a cloth he found in Ashara’s dresser, put his cotton shirt and his breeches back on, took a deep breath, and went back out into the main room of the house.

He let the deep breath out when he saw that it was only her mother in the kitchen. She was barefoot and in a simple green robe. She turned to face him when he cleared his throat. She did not seem surprised to see him. If anything she looked amused as she lifted a steaming mug to her lips.

“Good morning, Master Talvas,” she said.

“Good morning, Mistress Lavellan,” he replied.

“I think that’s rather formal for someone who just spent the night in my house uninvited, and in my daughter’s bedroom at that.”

Lucius laughed nervously. “Would it help to point out that you started with the formalities?”

Ellana’s laugh was clear as a bell, and some of his tension eased. “Yes, it would. Coffee? I made enough for all of us.”

“Yes, please. Although - how did you know -?”

“That you were here? Well, I can’t claim that I knew for certain until we got home and saw your shoes in the living room, but we had our suspicions when we couldn’t find you or Ashara at the reception. It helped that Claudia looked like the cat who got the cream all night, although it also could have been a reflection of all the Orlesians she managed to humiliate all night.”

Lucius laughed again at the thought. Claudia. Of course. He accepted the mug of coffee that Ellana offered him. She picked her own back up afterwards and sipped from it, humming happily. It was hard to believe that she was still, in name, the leader of the very country whose ground he stood on. She looked so at peace, so domestic.

“I suppose I should apologize for the intrusion.”

“Why? My daughter is a grown woman. A soldier who has seen the horrors of war. I could hardly be angry with her for bringing a man home to her bed. I must say, of all her options, I am most happy that it is you.”

Ellana moved towards the table and Lucius followed. Perhaps it was the strangeness of the whole scene that made him bold enough to say what he said next.

“And why is that?”

To his surprise, Ellana put down her coffee and reached across the table and put her hand on his forearm.

“Because you make my daughter very happy, Lucius Talvas. And she needs that, now more than ever. She has been through so much in this last year.”

“I can only begin to imagine. But I do want to make her happy. I want to make her happy for as long as she’ll have me. The arrangements aren’t completely finished, but I’m ready to leave Tevinter behind. To come here, to Enasan. To marry her, someday, if that’s what she wants.”

His heart was in his throat. What would she say to that? He himself had only just begun to hope for that future. It was murky and yet inestimably precious.

“Good,” Ellana said. “I am glad. One thing to consider though - if you’re going to marry our daughter, you’ll need to stop letting my husband intimidate you. He’s not nearly as scary as everyone thinks, you know. He set his own robes on fire on more than one occasion. He snores terribly. He’s very ticklish.”

Lucius could not help but laugh at the images she presented. She was right. They did run directly counter to everything he’d grown up believing about the Dread Wolf.

“He’s just a perpetual worrier,” she went on. “And he loves his daughter more than just about anything else in this life. He will never put up a fight if you show that you make her happy, and that you’re here to stay. And did you know - you’re taller than him. You could start by not slouching whenever he enters a room.”

He’d forgotten how blunt she was. She and Claudia had that in common. His cheeks were hot with embarrassment.

“Thank you for the advice, and the coffee.”

“Thank you for loving my daughter,” she said, and her grey eyes were all sincerity.

They sat in comfortable silence for a short while, and then a door opened, and bare feet hushed across the wood floor, and Lucius could feel from aura alone that it was Solas. His immediate instinct was to stand up, either to bolt or to offer some sort of acknowledgement of his presence. But Ellana was right. He was here to stay. He could not run out of the room every time Solas entered it for the next several decades.

It was the thought of those several decades, of the woman still sleeping down the hall, and the fact that she loved him ( _she loved him_ ) that made his smile so warm when he greeted Solas.

“Good morning,” he said, raising his mug a little in greeting.

Solas studied him. The back of Lucius’s neck started to feel hot.

“Good morning,” Solas said finally, his tone neutral. Then he went to his wife, kissed her forehead, and went past her into the kitchen. He activated the fire rune and opened a cabinet to look for a pan. Lucius became suddenly aware that Ellana’s eyes were on him.

 _Shoulders back_ , she mouthed. _Chin up_.

He complied, his face flushing with heat to match his neck. She smiled at him, and it was oddly mischievous.

“Don’t make anything too complicated, vhenan,” Ellana said. “We don’t have long before we need to get ready and meet the rest of the council.”

 _Vhenan_ . He and Ashara had never talked about the word, not really, other than a time he asked her what it meant in passing. He’d earned a description and a history more than a definition, and from that he’d deduced that it was a step beyond the affectionate names used in human languages. It had a meaning not quite equaled by a simple translation of _my heart_. He’d noted that she had not called him that before. It made sense when they were younger, when things were new. When they parted ways, he’d looked back on it as a sign.

But she had said it - over and over and over again - the night before, when she lay bare in his arms. _Vhenan, vhenan, vhenan_. Like she couldn’t get enough of the sound. His chest swelled up with pride at the memory.

“Is Ashara awake?”

Solas’s question threw him more than it should have. Lucius wished he had bothered to plait his hair and tie it back before he came out. He pushed it back from his face, belatedly straightened his posture again, before answering.

“No, she was still asleep when I got up.”

“Good. Sometimes she lingers in bed even though she’s awake. She never did that before,” Solas said.

Before Clermont. Before the war. Lucius gripped his mug tighter than before.

“So I have heard. I could go and wake her, if…?” He trailed off. Solas was still staring at him. Was he expecting some particular response? Some undying oath?

“Let her sleep,” Ellana said. She was smiling a cat’s smile, all mischief. “I suspect you two didn’t sleep much.”

Lucius’s face felt hot enough to light dry tinder. He wanted to look away from Solas. But he also had to see his reaction. He shot a look at his wife, but she just kept up her mischievous smile, and sipped her coffee. He looked back at Lucius, and the corners of his lips were lifted in a smirk of their own.

“I want eggs for breakfast, Solas,” Ellana said, her voice singsonging. “And bread to dip in the yolks. And butter on the bread.”

“Are you still intoxicated?” Solas asked, shaking his head even as he moved towards the stove once more.

“It is entirely possible. Dorian kept refilling my champagne when I wasn’t looking, after all.”

“You will regret that later.”

“I know. I’m entirely too old for all of this.” Ellana laughed, but it had a manic edge this time. There was something jagged in her smile. “If I’m drunk, do you think I can get out of going to the talks today?”

Solas’s gaze was soft when he turned to her. An egg sizzled in the pan.

“I am afraid not, my heart.”

Lucius had forgotten, in the domesticity at all, in the rush of his own joy, that Enasan’s fate still wasn’t decided. That the man and woman before him were more than just Ashara’s parents. Much more.

That was when the door to Ashara’s room opened, and bare feet whispered across the floor once again, and she was there. She looked tired and a little sheepish, and her hair was entirely wrapped up in purple cloth, likely because she’d made the mistake of sleeping with it down, and as always it struck him how much older that made her look. His chest tightened at the sight of her. She smiled at him.

“On dhea,” she said, directing her gaze to her parents. Now there was something a little defiant in the way she walked over to him. The way she bent and kissed his cheek. “Good morning, vhenan.”

Lucius could not help but smile back, a wide and toothy grin. He didn’t care that her parents were there. The awkwardness of it all vanished with her nearness.

“Good morning,” he said in return. She sat in the chair next to him, her hand on his forearm.

“Eggs for breakfast?” Solas said.

“Yes, please,” Ashara said. Then, turning back to Lucius. “I just remembered I made plans to meet a friend for lunch. Would you want to come with me?”

“Of course. I would like to go back to the hotel first for new clothes, though.” A flare of the heat returned to his face at the brazenness of those words.

“The tavern is nearby your hotel. That should work.”

“Perfect.”

The conversation went on, not without its occasional awkwardness, but not without pleasantness either. Solas brought their breakfasts to the table one at a time. Ashara’s hand never left his forearm. Lucius felt more at home than he had in months.

When he and Ashara set off on foot for his hotel shortly after breakfast, she kept up a constant stream of descriptions for him, and he began to truly imagine a life here in Enasan. _That’s where I stumbled when I was two and broke open my chin on a loose cobblestone,_ she said, and he could picture them walking past the place a hundred times on their way to have dinner with her parents, could imagine both of them retelling that story. _This is the bakery where we usually buy our bread_ , she said, and he could imagine setting off on a misty fall morning to get warm and crusty rolls for the both of them.

This could truly be his home, if this was where she wanted to stay. He only saw other humans rarely on their walk, but that did not matter. Ashara was here, and Enasan was beautiful, and he was happy.

Ashara got quieter as they reached the more inhabited part of the city. Her eyes darted through the crowds. She winced at loud sounds. He squeezed her hand.

“It’s okay,” he assured her several times. She squeezed his hand back.

When they got up to his hotel room she sat down heavily on his bed, seemingly exhausted, although their walk couldn’t have been longer than a mile. She had always been the one buzzing with energy before.

“You can rest while I get ready,” he said, cupping her cheek.

“I wish I didn’t need to rest,” she said, her eyes downcast. Lucius felt his heart crack inside his chest.

“It’s okay,” he said again. He wished he had something else to offer, even if those words were true, even if he would say them for the rest of his life if she needed him too.

Ashara looked up at him, her mouth set in a hard line.

“I’m not the same, Lucius,” she said. “What I’ve been through in the last year - I don’t think I’ll ever be the same.”

Lucius knelt. She was taller than him this way - her on the bed, him on his knees. He cupped her face with both his hands this time.

“I love you,” he said, putting as much resolve, as much certainty, into those words as he could feel in his chest. “I love you when you are happy and when you are sad. You may have changed, but that fact hasn’t.”

She stared at him. He knew she was testing the weight and depth of that commitment. Maybe even questioning it. He did not look away.

“Okay,” she said.

He kissed her forehead and finished dressing. He thought all was well until they were about to leave, and her eyes went wide and she stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“My friend. Haleir. I slept with him.”

She said this like she had only just realized it. He blinked once, unsure of what kind of reaction she was expecting.

“Okay?”

“Okay? That’s it?”

“Well, as long as you didn’t sleep with him while I was in the bathroom, I don’t see the issue.”

“Well, obviously I didn’t do that,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I just - thought you should know before we met up with him. It didn’t mean anything. It was just one time, after an awful battle. I just - needed to feel something, and so did he.”

“I think that makes sense.”

Ashara was eyeing him again, suspicious somehow. She threaded her arm through his once more.

“You’re very reasonable,” she said.

“Thank you. I strive to be. I slept with Rhea, in case you wanted to know. But in the end it didn’t mean anything to me, either. You have a better ass, you know.”

She laughed, shoved him. “And that’s the only reason it didn’t mean anything? You felt very hairy after Haleir, you know.”

“Ouch. I’m not sure if that’s a compliment. I can’t help my hairy humanness, you know.”

She drew him close again. “It was a compliment. I like your hairy humanness.”

He kissed her forehead. He would never get enough of kissing her, all over. They went down to lunch.

Haleir was not exactly the kind of friend he would have expected Ashara to make, although common wisdom did hold that trenches make strange bedfellows of many people. He was brash, loud, and already drunk even though it was just midday. He flirted lewdly (and successfully) with the man waiting on them. He let out a guffaw when he saw Ashara take Lucius’s hand on top of the table.

“So, you found your way back to your man after all? I hoped you might. Lucius, she was absolutely mooning over you every time she said your name, even if she tried to pretend not to. She probably thought of you when I was in-”

_“Haleir.”_

“What, you didn’t tell him?”

“Of course I told him! But do you need to be so crass?”

“Yes.”

“I’m telling your mother.”

“And shattering the truce we only just built? You’re cruel, Lavellan.”

She recovered some of her old vitality as they argued and drank cheap beer (the taste grew on you the more you drank). She had changed, yes. Both she and Haleir shied away from mentioning the war, pain written clear on their faces. But when she stole food off his plate and ate it, her eyes had the same mischievous twinkle. Her laugh sounded just the same.

She made the same sweet, pleading sounds when he took her back to his hotel room and laid her back on his bed and fucked her with his fingers. When he got on top of her and pushed himself inside. When he kissed her deeply as he moved in her.

“I love you,” she whined high and bright and happy as he moved into her over and over and over. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

“I love you,” he murmured back against the crook of her neck, moving harder, faster, following the rhythm of her hips. “Oh, Maker, I love you.”

She turned over and he fucked her like that, slower now, so he could watch the ripple of her back, the red lines his hand left in her skin when he ran his nails down from her neck to her ass. She had new scars on her belly and her shoulder, scars that made his heart turn over in pain and distress. He wanted to mark her only with love, as if that could replace the other scars. Maybe he could, with time.

He was willing to spend his whole life trying. And looking at how she smiled at him afterwards, he was sure that she was too.

“I love you,” he said one more time, rubbing his nose against hers.

“I love you too,” she said, like a final seal.

Lucius Talvas was ready for the rest of his life to start right then.

*

Solas spent more of the first day of peace talks thinking about his daughter than he really should have.

But Ellana, Cassandra, Vivienne - even young Claudia Naevar - had things so well in hand that it couldn’t be _too_ irresponsible to replay the morning’s events in his mind’s eye.

Ashara looked so happy at Lucius’s side. Happier than he had seen her since Clermont. But his mind kept circling back to one thought over and over again - Cole, appearing at his side in the dead of night, telling him that Ashara was in uthenera, and all that meant.

Ellana had felt the echoes of forever in his arms months ago. With how the talks were going - with the increasing openness of their experiments with the Veil, the possibility of accelerating their plans - he stood a greater and greater chance of spending forever with the woman he loved. But he knew how many nights he had lain awake at her side, trying to memorize the exact sound of her deep and even breathing, trying to save up precious moments for the long forever he would spend without her.

He had at least had a shred of hope to get him through those nights. Ashara had none.

And if the last year had taught him anything about his daughter, it was that they were too much alike in how they dealt with sorrow, how they struggled to push it away, to process all the giant feelings that bloomed within them.

How would she handle this greatest of sorrows? How many nights would she lay awake, watching her partner sleep, knowing she had no hope of averting that awful day when those deep and even breaths stopped forever?

That was why when she came home that evening - alone - to pick up some clothes to bring back to Lucius’s hotel, he could not stop himself.

“This is a mistake,” he said.

Of course, it was what he said.

There were a hundred shades of complexity to his feelings, to the issue at hand, but standing there in the bedroom where she had always asked him for just one more bedtime story, he blurted out the simplest version of it.

To her credit, Ashara stayed calm.

“I disagree,” Ashara said as she folded another set of legwraps and put them into her trunk. “Was it a mistake when you agreed to start a life with Mamae, with no idea of whether or not she would live forever?”

She followed the train of his thoughts exactly, of course.

“No, but I at least had the theoretical understanding that we might -”

“Papae,” she said, insistently, turning to him. His mouth was twisted into the shape that always meant concern, and not anger. “All of life is built on theoretical understandings. We can’t know anything of the future, no matter who we are, or who we love.”

They were the words of a grown woman. There was no way around that. She was grown, and at the end of the day he would respect whatever she decided. But he could not help the fear that still beat in his chest.

“I only fear that this will hurt you, da’vhenan. I worry that it will hurt you past what you can bear.”

Ashara sighed. She put another blouse into her trunk.

“Do you think there is any way it wouldn’t hurt, Papae?”

Solas imagined a world where she let Lucius go. Where he married a lovely Tevene woman and had children with her, and those children had grandchildren, and someday she came to his side when he was dying and told him that she had always loved him and she was proud of the life he had made.

He imagined a world where Ellana was the one dying, different children, different grandchildren at her side, and he was the one saying good-bye to the woman he'd let go out of fear.

He closed his eyes against the thought.

“No. I do not think there is,” he admitted.

Ashara smiled at him, a sad, knowing smile. She kissed his cheek before she left.

He told Ellana about the conversation that night, lying in bed. She sighed.

“I have been thinking the same thing,” she said. “We don’t know what any of this will mean for them. For our grandchildren, if they choose to have them.”

“So what do we do?” Solas asked.

Ellana sighed again.

“I don’t know about you,” she said. “But I am old, and I am tired of trying to run the world. I don’t think there is anything we can do except support them however they need us to, for however long they are together.”

Solas sank down into the covers. Ellana curled up close to him, pillowing her cheek on his chest. He rubbed her back.

“You are right.”

“Of course I am. I’m serious, though. I’m tired of trying to run the world. I’m done after this. I want to go live in the woods somewhere, and if anyone ever comes and asks me to help with war or politics again, I want to tell them to go fuck themselves.”

Solas could not help but laugh. He knew she was serious. She would do it.

“I think I would like to see that happen,” he said.

“Good,” Ellana said, looking up at him, smiling. “Because you’re stuck with me forever, you know.”

Solas smiled back at her.

“My love,” he said. “I would not have it any other way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost done, guys. Just the epilogue now :)
> 
> Thank you as always for reading! Prompts, suggestions, comments and general discussion more than welcome here or on my [Tumblr](https://buttsonthebeach.tumblr.com/)!


	21. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is guys: the epilogue!
> 
> Very small content warnings for: references to post-partum depression, and breastfeeding (just in case that bothers people? I guess? IDK)

“Mamaela!”

The shriek pierced Ellana’s heart, until her gaze snapped up to see that her five-year-old granddaughter Vanasha was darting towards her, wide-eyed but unharmed.

“What is it?” she asked as Vanasha twined herself around her leg, her smooth brown brow furrowed in deep concern.

“There was something slimy,” she whined. “It touched me. I got scared.”

“Well, did you see what it was?”

“No,” Vanasha said, butting her head against Ellana’s hips. She was tall, like both her parents, and reedy and lanky as her mother was at that age.

“Well, then running away was a silly thing to do. Come.”

She took her granddaughter’s hand and together they walked through the cool, shallow creek that wound like a ribbon around the permanent camp that housed Clan Lavellan within Enasan’s borders - the camp where she and Solas had lived for the last ten years, since the war ended, since they left their public life in Enasan’s capital behind. They’d given their beautiful little house - the first home they’d ever made - to Ashara and Lucius, and they’d started a new phase in their lives. One where there was truly nothing but the two of them, and plenty of time to spare. Where there were warm hammocks in the sun, and communal meals eaten at the clan’s campfire, and Ellana could train young hunters again. Young hunters who were the children of the same hunters she had once trained a lifetime ago, when she still had vallaslin on her face, before anyone ever called her  _ herald  _ or _ inquisitor  _ or _ the Dread Wolf’s whore  _ or _ Ambassador or High Commander.  _

She liked the titles she had now much better.  _ Hahren Ellana _ , and  _ vhenan _ , and  _ Mamae  _ and  _ Mamaela _ .

As they walked, Vanasha tittered and squirmed at the touch of every mossy rock and close-swimming fish. They made their way to the place where she’d been scared. They determined quickly that it had been a small frog that brushed against her foot, and together they squatted down in the water, observing it.

“It’s a chorus frog, see? It has the three brown stripes on its back. It sings very prettily.”

“No it doesn’t,” Vanasha said, wrinkling her nose.

“How do you know?”

“It’s slimy.”

“Slimy things can’t sing well?”

“No!” Again, the childish lilt on that one-syllable word.

“Do you want to hear it sing? I bet we can, if we can catch it.”

They did their best to position themselves well, to make their steps small and quiet, but Vanasha shied at the point of actually catching it, squealing at the feel of it on her fingers and startling the poor creature into fleeing. Ellana heard laughter from the other shore - though whether it was Solas, Ashara, or Lucius, she could not say. It warmed her all the same.

“You’ll never make a hunter this way, da’vhenan,” she chided.

“No,” Vanasha said, elongating the word as long as her little lungs would allow. Then she held out both of her hands impatiently. “I will be a good hunter. Mamaela, look.”

Ellana saw only the silt and mud that covered Vanasha’s hands, and she was about to say as much - and then Vanasha impatiently took her hand and held it in both of her own, and Ellana could feel the unnatural warmth radiating from her granddaughter’s hands. 

Magic.

“My goodness,” Ellana said softly. “You must be practicing very hard!”

“Why doesn’t it glow?” Vanasha asked.

“I don’t know. Mine doesn’t, either.” 

With that Ellana summoned the pulse she could now feel at all hours of the day - a distant hum, a wavering vibration that filled her from head to toe. The magic that was hers. Weak, and faint - but enough to warm her own hand to match her granddaughter’s.

She would never forget the morning three years before when she woke in their aravel to feel that current running through her whole body, and shook Solas awake to confirm her suspicions. She hadn’t seen him smile so broadly since Vanasha’s birth two years before that.

“I do not think you will ever be a mage the way you understand mages, with the kind of raw power you are familiar with, capable of setting the air aflame or summoning spirits,” Solas said, his fingers laced with hers, his words an eager rush. “But vhenan - if you can manage even this - it really is going to work.”

Ellana Lavellan was going to live forever.

It was a thought she’d had some time to adjust to. The most surreal moment had undoubtedly been standing before the assembled council for the peace talks that ended the war with Orlais a decade before, announcing that they were strategically weakening the Veil in Enasan with the goal of restoring their people’s birthright. Weathering that storm had taken all the strength she had left as a political leader. It was utterly draining to explain, time and time again, that her people’s gain was not Thedas’s loss. That if they had wanted to use their power for conquest, they could have at any time before this. That, yes, she could guarantee they would never use it for conquest as long as she was alive, and that she intended on being alive for several centuries at least.

“Mamaela,” Vanasha giggled, pulling her hands away and wrinkling her straight, strong nose, just like her father’s. “Too hot!”

But what of her black-haired granddaughter, whose ears were only faintly pointed instead of long and bladed, whose eyes glimmered a little when she crawled into her parents’ bed at night but did not flash with the brightness Ellana had known all her life around other elves - her granddaughter who some elves called  _ shemlen _ and who some humans called  _ knife-ear _ , who was not an  _ elf-blooded human _ but was not an  _ elf _ but was something entirely new - would she live forever?

It was a terrible thought for a breezy afternoon, for a family trip to celebrate the arrival of summer with Ellana’s clan. It was the thought she, Solas, Ashara, and Lucius had done their best to avoid, first when Lucius and Ashara discussed having children, and then when Ashara’s stomach swelled and grew (and when her skin was pale and grey with the illness her first pregnancy brought), and then when Vanasha’s deep brown eyes first opened on the world. And again when her little sister Aerin came into the world feet first, two years later - and then a scant six months ago, when their little brother Kyril was born in the middle of a terrible snowstorm.

But Ellana couldn’t resist it, in that moment, feeling the magic they shared. She reached for that pulse so low it wasn’t even a sound, but instead a feeling - the magic that would let them live forever. She pushed it towards Vanasha.

“Mamaela,” she giggled. “That tickles.”

Ellana’s heart sped up.

“Really? It does? Are you sure, da’vhenan?”

“Yes,” Vanasha said, as if her mamaela was the silliest woman alive for even asking. 

“Does it feel the way Mamaela’s magic always feels?”

“No. It’s different. Like when we’re sick and Mamae helps us feel better. I want a snack.”

With that she was off for the other bank, where her parents and siblings and grandfather were relaxing. Ellana followed, more slowly, enjoying the cool water against her ankles, the slippery stones, the excited thrumming of her heart in her chest. She could see that Aerin was curled up in Solas’s arms, dead asleep, body limp, having played in the river to her three-year-old heart’s content earlier that day. Kyril was at Ashara’s breast, nursing. Lucius and Solas were talking, their voices low. Lucius had fine silver hairs threading through his otherwise black curls now. They shone in the afternoon light. He was thirty-eight years old.

“It’s nothing,” he said when she’d remarked on it on the day of their arrival a week before. “My father went grey early, too. Maybe it’s something about working in the printing business. Or maybe it’s having such impossibly mischievous children.”

He’d swooped Vanasha up in his arms at that, tickling her until she shrieked. 

“Pater, put me down! I’m not the baby!” 

But she was smiling and giggling nonetheless. Lucius had kissed her forehead and then set her down. It had been a wonder to watch the quiet, nervous young man Ashara had brought to Skyhold all those years ago blossom into a father. He would never love large parties or speaking to strangers, but Lucius Talvas was centered in himself now. As she had predicted, Solas had chosen his daughter’s happiness over any misgivings he had about the match. Solas denied it to this day, but he had been misty-eyed at their wedding. Drunk with pride and joy as much as he was with wine.

Ellana knew he would mourn, one day - truly mourn - when his son-in-law passed away.

She did not want to think of that. Not today.

As Ellana reached the blanket where the rest of the family sat, Ashara eased Kyril away from her breast and he immediately set to wailing, making Ashara sigh and close her eyes.

“I don’t know what to tell your grandson,” she said, beginning the rhythmic process of burping him. “The milk has to run out sometime. And if he eats any more he is just going to spit it back up.”

“We’ll take him to Alma, the midwife. She may have an idea of what to give him.”

Ashara nodded, already too busy soothing her wailing son to reply. Ellana found herself instinctively studying her daughter, searching her face for signs of fatigue beyond what was normal in a mother to three small children. For the awful, consuming despair that had plagued her once again after Vanasha’s birth, had made her scarcely want to leave her room or hold her daughter because she feared she was already a worthless mother, that she would harm the tiny infant. Ellana saw no outward sign. Lucius would have mentioned it privately, anyway, if he had concerns.

Kyril buried himself against Ashara’s neck as she hummed and hushed and rubbed his back. His crying slowed and then stopped. Ellana was amazed that her daughter sat before her, thirty-three years old, holding her third child, and yet Ellana had to stop herself from tucking Ashara’s hair behind her ears, asking if she had been eating and sleeping well, if she needed anything. Then again, it wasn’t amazing at all. She would always be her mother. She would be her mother for centuries to come.

She thought about telling Ashara what she had tried with Vanasha. She decided against it. There was so much time ahead of them to discuss such things. Ellana wanted to live wholly in the moment. It was possibly the only thing she had ever wanted in her life. And now she could pursue that and only that.

“Kyril’s hair is lighter than the girls’, don’t you think? His skin, too. I think he has your nose, Papae,” Ashara said.

“It is your nose, too,” Solas said, smirking. Aerin was still sprawled in his lap, snoring slightly. 

Ashara was right - both her daughters had the brown skin of their father, all cool chocolate tones, not the tawniness of Ashara’s gold-brown skin or Ellana’s own red-brown complexion, and certainly not Solas’s milky-pale skin. They had their father’s black hair, too. His brown eyes. Ellana thought Vanasha was developing the same chiseled cheekbones and jaw of her mother and grandfather, but it was hard to say for sure.

“How has your research been lately?” Solas asked Ashara.

“Mamae, I want some cheese for a snack,” Vanasha said loudly before her mother could answer.

“Careful,” Lucius warned. “Your brother and sister are sleeping. And I think you’ve had enough to eat this afternoon.” Sensing the impending protests, Lucius nodded towards the aravels. “Why don’t you go and see if Calen and Elanor can play?”

Vanasha brightened at that and took off like a rabbit flushed from cover in search of her two best friends in the clan. Every time Ashara and Lucius came to visit, the three of them were taller, and closer, and capable of more trouble than ever. Ellana knew their mother from long ago. She had been a babe in her parents’ arms when Ellana left for the Conclave. Calen and Elanor were the youngest of her five children.

Life traveled in circles and circles and circles, always wheeling, like a bird in the sky.

“It’s going well, when I can manage to find time for it,” Ashara said. “I still get a hard time from some of the older professors at the university for being involved in research on how to help spirits transition across the Veil and integrate into our society without being a spirit medium myself, but most of them have given up on that argument anyway.”

“It was pure nonsense to begin with,” Solas scoffed. “You are a Dreamer. You understand the Fade better than they ever will, even if they have a finer attunement to spirits.”

“Yes. At least it also means they don’t try and send me to the field, to the places where spirits are already crossing over. I like my books and my library and my hometown.”

Hometown. It was an oddly quaint word for a city that now had a population in the thousands.

“You look very far away, vhenan,” Solas said, touching her knee. “Is anything the matter?”

Ellana shook her head, forced herself back into the present. Her magic hummed in her chest. She felt the brush of Solas’s aura and welcomed it. She could only manage the barest flicker of her own against his. She was like one of her new hunters, arms wobbling as they drew their bows. But he was just as pleased as she always was when they finally drew it back all the way. She could feel it in the magic, not that she needed to. She could see it plain as day on his face, magic or no.

Aerin stirred in Solas’s lap and rubbed her eyes.

“I’m thirsty,” she mumbled.

“Thirsty? I thought your name was Aerin,” Solas said, playfully poking her nose.

“It is!” she protested, giggling. “Give me water.”

“I did not hear please at the end of that sentence.”

“Please?”

Solas obliged, picking up the waterskin at his side and steadying it from the bottom while Aerin perched on his knee and held the top to her mouth with her small, chubby hands. Ellana’s heart swelled, as it always did, to see Solas so content. He had more freckles than ever before, a testament to their time in the sun. He taught magic to the many young mages that called Clan Lavellan home. He spent afternoons laying in the grass and reading books, and more often than not fell asleep with the book on his face.

“Where’s Nasha?” Aerin asked. She still found the first part of her sister’s name difficult to say.

“Playing with Calen and Elanor,” Ashara said.

Aerin slipped from Solas’s lap and made her way to her mother, peering down at her brother. He had settled in their mother’s arms, and was avidly chewing on one hand.

“Little brother,” she said. “Hi, little brother.”

She patted Kyril’s head. He beamed at her, giggled, and Ellana’s whole world was in that sound. He sounded just the way Ashara had when she was tiny, so many years ago.

“Do you want to go play with your sister?” Lucius asked. Aerin nodded, and he rose, offered her his hand, and together they started walking back towards the aravels. He stopped halfway and let Aerin continue, watching as she disappeared into a flock of children that undoubtedly contained Vanasha, Calen, and Elanor alike. Ashara watched them go, smiling.

“I can see the appeal to living in a clan,” she said. “Always having someone around to watch the children. Having so many friends to grow up with.”

Ellana thought back to her childhood in Clan Lavellan. To her parents and their forbidden prayers to the Maker, the children who teased her for being dark-skinned and the child of flat-eared parents, the old Keeper, the one before Deshanna, who called her stupid for struggling so much with her lessons. 

She thought, too, of the many silent hunts alongside her fellow hunters, a glance exchanging all the information each of them needed, of the hands that had pressed her own when she stood at the grave of her first husband, Mahalen, of Arlathvhens and the celebration of each new child’s birth, of proud adults wearing vallaslin that had barely dried.

“I am happy I grew up Dalish,” Ellana said. “In some ways, I wish we had been able to raise you in a clan like this. But there was a country to build.”

Ashara was quiet a while, staring towards her husband and her two daughters, absentmindedly rubbing her son’s back as he burbled and fussed in her lap. Then she turned to her mother and smiled.

“And you made a great one. I would not trade it for anything. Thank you for all that you did, Mamae.”

There were portraits and statues and songs all dedicated to Ellana Lavellan, but no gratitude had ever meant quite as much as that simple phrase, dropped from her only child’s mouth.

“Does that mean you’ll be moving here?” Ellana said, teasing, pretending the warmth blooming in her chest wasn’t close to making her cry.

Ashara laughed. “No. I think I have the best of both worlds. The city and everything it offers, and our visits here.”

Ellana caught sight of Solas then, saw the softness and fondness in his own smile, felt the ache radiating off of him, projecting through his aura.

“I am glad to hear it,” he said.

The wind moved through the trees and carried with it the sounds of the clan. Ellana settled into the present again, content in her own skin, in that exact moment. The river moved over the rocks. Kyril started to cry again, and Lucius returned to take him to their aravel and put him down for his nap. He crooned to his son in Tevene, kissed his wife on the cheek.

“I think I’ll lay down as well,” he said. “The girls are off playing.”

“I’ll join you in a little while,” Ashara replied, stretching this way and that. She was still willowy, even a little gangly. She was curvier from the three children she’d borne, but Ellana could still see the coltish girl she had been in her long limbs.

“Don’t go making us anymore grandchildren,” Ellana said. “That one isn’t even walking yet.”

Lucius snorted. “No promises,” he said over his shoulder as he left. Ashara was chuckling too.

Would all of her grandchildren begin to feel the same trembling energy she had woven through Vanasha’s hands earlier?

There was nothing to do but wait to find out. 

The truth was that it didn’t really matter, Ellana realized as she sat, half-listening to Solas and Ashara as they discussed how Claudia had assumed Dorian’s seat in the Magisterium, how they wanted to go to Tevinter as a family once Kyril was old enough for the journey. She would love each and every grandchild all the same. She would be grateful for each moment she had with them, even if the moments weren’t infinite.

Ashara rose to go. Ellana was only dimly aware of that. She was not aware at all of Solas moving nearer until his hand was on hers.

“You said you were not far away, but you have the same look on your face,” he said. “Are you sure all is well?”

Leaning into his embrace was still a luxury after all these years. She turned and settled into his lap, her back against his chest, and he welcomed her.

“Everyone wants to be in my lap today,” he said.

“It’s a good lap.”

Solas chuckled, kissed her ear. “You did not answer my question.”

Ellana traced meaningless patterns on the back of his hand before she spoke.

“I tried it with Vanasha today. With the ancient magic. She felt it. She said it tickled, that it wasn’t like my normal magic. That it was more like when Ashara heals them when they are sick.”

Solas was still behind her.

“That is promising. It will take more time to know if she does really feel it, but - that is promising.”

“It is,” Ellana said. “Except that she has two siblings that are too young for us to try it on. Except that her father will never feel it. Except that Dorian, and Bull, and Cassandra, and Josephine, and Thom, and Claudia will never feel it.”

It was a litany of names she thought about often. Cassandra’s health was poor. She was in her eighties now. In her tenure the Chantry had changed slowly but surely. Her final fight had been to admit all races to the Chantry’s priesthood, and now, just as with dying Celene ten years before, challengers lurked in the wings, promising to peel back all of those reforms if they were named the next Divine. Ellana cared more about her friend than she cared about all of that.

“It is not fair,” Solas said, resting his chin against her hair. “It never is. It never was.”

Ellana closed her eyes and drew herself back into the moment. The warmth of Solas around her, the smell of his skin, the distant voices of their granddaughters and the other children they were playing with. She breathed. Then she let her mind drift over the faces of her friends again, over the things they had accomplished. 

Dorian and his reforms and his private victory of living a life with the man he loved (with increasing openness as they got older). Bull overcoming the traumas of his past and finding peace within himself, and a man who loved him in all his complexity. Josephine, and how she had saved her family from ruin, and had ultimately been able to marry the man she loved, too. Thom, and how he had taken the second chance Ellana granted him for all it was worth.

Then she thought of their children. Thom and Josephine’s son, as clever as both his parents and as kind, as rooted in tradition, and as hopeful for the future. Claudia, a testament to her long-dead parents and to Dorian and Bull, the one who would carry on Dorian’s work in the Magisterium. Cassandra and all the orphanages she had established and reformed around Thedas in her role as Divine, the hundreds of children she’d helped to raise by proxy. Briala’s daughter Vianne, another symbol of a new era for the elven people, as much a part of the Orlesian aristocracy as she was part of its alienages.

_ Nothing ever really ends, _ she thought.

“It’s a good life anyway, isn’t it?” she said finally, turning around to face Solas, kneeling now, separated from the circle of his arms.

He looked at her like she was the only thing in the world. He smiled.

“It is what we make of it. And we have made a good one, and so have the people we love. I think that is all any of us can do, in the end.”

Ellana leaned her forehead against his, watched his eyelids flutter closed, and kissed him, long, slow, and sweet. Like it was the first time all over again. It was a good life. She wouldn’t change a thing.

“Let us go and watch our grandchildren play,” she said, rising.

Solas took her hand, and together they walked back towards the aravels.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. 13 months later (+ a couple months of initial drafting before that) and this story is finally done. It was a fic I thought I wouldn't write because I didn't have the right skills for it, because it was intimidating, because I thought no one would read it. It was a fic I ended up writing through the worst of my depression, through leaving my dream career behind, through reevaluating the direction of my whole life. From the bottom of my heart - if you have been reading all along, if you just started reading and caught up, if you are reading this ten years in the future -
> 
> Thank you. 
> 
> Thank you for spending time with the characters and places that have meant so much to me. I hope that I have meant something to you.
> 
> This is - I swear on my life - my last long fic in this series. I have a couple of related prompts that I want to fill in the next month or so over on my [Tumblr](https://buttsonthebeach.tumblr.com/), so you can keep an eye out for those if you are interested. (Or send me more prompts, if there is a scene from this universe that you'd like to see!) I do have other DA-related projects that I would like to work on as well, and of course, with DA4 on the horizon, I am sure I will come tumbling back into Solasmancing hell before long.
> 
> But for now - thank you again, and be well <3


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